A bill amending Korea's Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information (the core AML law governing virtual asset service providers) advanced from committee referral to committee review on 26 August 2026. The bill would formally abolish the "one exchange, one bank" practice — an unwritten rule under which each VASP has in practice been confined to a real-name-verified-account relationship with a single bank — and would allow a VASP to contract with more than one bank for real-name account services. It would also transfer most registration-related provisions to a separate, forthcoming Virtual Asset Basic Act, leaving only real-name-account and AML-related matters (Articles 3, 7, and 17) in this law.

No quantitative threshold, effective date, or penalty has been set. The measure is a pending bill at the committee-review stage and has not been enacted.

What this means for you

  • Do not change banking arrangements yet. The bill has not passed and no effective date has been fixed; it could still be amended, merged with other proposals, or stalled in committee.
  • If you operate or plan to operate a VASP in Korea, understand that the current single-bank bottleneck for real-name-verified accounts is a market/banking practice, not a statutory requirement — this bill would convert multi-bank contracting into an explicit legal right rather than leaving it dependent on individual banks' willingness to issue real-name confirmation letters.
  • Track this alongside the Virtual Asset Basic Act. The bill proposes moving VASP registration provisions to that separate act while keeping only real-name-account/AML matters here, so your compliance mapping may need to split across two statutes once both are finalized.
  • Reassess banking concentration risk independently of the bill's timeline. If your business currently depends on a single bank for real-name accounts, consider whether pursuing additional banking relationships now — even before enactment — reduces exposure to a single counterparty's decisions.

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Munteok provides regulatory information, not legal advice.