Overseas virtual asset exchanges such as Binance Holdings Ltd., OKX, and Crypto.com are expanding their business footprint in the Korean market by issuing their own payment cards. While Korean virtual asset exchanges remain bound by regulation, overseas exchanges are evolving into all-in-one financial platforms.
Binance Holdings Ltd., OKX, and Crypto.com operate their own debit cards that pay for goods with virtual assets. Users can pay with these cards using dollar stablecoins such as "USDT" and "USDC" held on each exchange.
Binance Holdings Ltd. and OKX are based on Mastercard, while Crypto.com uses Visa. Visa and Mastercard each have 130 million and 90 million merchants worldwide.
Binance Holdings Ltd. and OKX are waiving annual fees to attract users. Cashback — a system that returns part of what you spend in cash or points — is paid on a sliding scale based on the purchase amount.
Cashback on the Binance Holdings Ltd. card is tiered (T1–T4): 1% for purchases under $100, 1.5% for $100 to under $500, 2% for $500 to under $1,000, and 3% for $1,000 and up. The OKX card returns up to 2%, and the Crypto.com card up to 5%. Typical cashback on bank debit cards is in the 1% range. These exchanges pay cashback in USDC on the 10th of the following month.
All three exchange cards are available to users who have completed Know Your Customer (KYC) verification. The debit cards work with Apple Pay, so they can be used at convenience stores, cafes, and big-box retailers that support near field communication (NFC).
In Korea, an amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Specialized Credit Finance Business Act in 2024 prohibits buying coins with payment cards at overseas virtual asset exchanges. The stated purpose is to prevent capital outflows and money laundering. Because the three exchanges' payment cards use coins to spend in the real economy, they do not violate the regulation.
However, cards from overseas virtual asset exchanges are not licensed financial services in Korea, so users cannot be protected by Korean law if problems arise.
The goal of global virtual asset exchanges such as Binance Holdings Ltd. is to become all-in-one financial platforms. They aim to house every financial service on a single platform — beyond virtual asset transactions and custody to tokenized stocks, payments, cards, and savings. For domestic virtual asset exchanges, everything other than spot coin transactions is illegal under Korean law.