The battle for stablecoins in Taiwan heats up! Rumors suggest that "6 banks" may be the first to issue them.

Author: Ariel, Crypto City

Six Taiwanese banks are potential stablecoin issuers
Taiwan’s draft Virtual Asset Service Act has been approved by the Executive Yuan. Although it has not yet passed the third reading at the Legislative Yuan, the Financial Supervisory Commission has been actively developing subsidiary regulations. Its initial plan is to allow only domestic financial institutions to issue stablecoins, encouraging many industry players to try.

According to a report by the Economic Daily, six banks are rumored to be the first to issue stablecoins: CTBC Bank, Cathay United Bank, Taishin Bank, KGI Bank, Union Bank, and Taipei Fubon Bank.
The strategies of these six banks in blockchain and virtual-asset related areas are summarized as follows:

• CTBC Bank: Approved by the Financial Supervisory Commission to pilot virtual-asset custody services. In the first phase, it focuses on Bitcoin and Ether, managing assets through cold wallets and private-key sharding technology. It has also publicly recruited blockchain engineers in 2025.
• Cathay United Bank: Approved to pilot virtual-asset custody services, targeting high-net-worth individual customers. It also participates in the Financial Supervisory Commission’s RWA tokenization working group, and plans to test on-chain bond issuance.
• Taishin Bank: Currently receiving guidance on custody services. Recently, it has partnered with Taiwan Exchange HOYA BIT to provide New Taiwan Dollar trust services, offering deposit and withdrawal cash flows 24/7.
• KGI Bank: After obtaining pilot qualification, it has partnered with MaiCoin, BitoPro, and other legally operating crypto trading platforms in Taiwan to transfer some assets into the bank’s cold wallets for custody. It previously launched the “KGI Coin Enjoy Card,” offering rewards and redemption of cryptocurrencies through card swipes.
• Union Bank: In addition to being approved to pilot custody services, it also acquired about 9.67% equity in MaiCoin through investment, strengthening its participation in Taiwan’s crypto market.
• Fubon Bank: Fubon established “TWEX Taiwan Big Virtual Asset Exchange” through Taiwan Mobile. Fubon provides trust custody and cold-wallet technology mechanisms.

Besides the banks above, Taiwan’s state-owned banks, “First Bank” and “Hua Nan Bank,” also told the Commercial Times that they are highly interested in stablecoins. The chairman of E.SUN Financial Holding has also said that the institution will not miss out on the stablecoin and tokenization markets.
In addition, the strategic distribution cooperation between Capital Layer, a supplier of blockchain settlement infrastructure, and DunYang Technology, Taiwan’s largest system integrator, is also viewed as part of efforts to build out stablecoin-related plans.

In 2018, Taiwan’s first “TWD stablecoin” quietly exited the market
On the other hand, years ago, Taiwan’s third-party payment provider Green World Fintech Services launched CryptoDT blockchain financial services and issued the Taiwan Stablecoin (TWDT-ETH). It adopted Ethereum’s token standard ERC-20, with each token pegged 1:1 to the value of the New Taiwan Dollar. The circulating Taiwan Stablecoin represents a guarantee of NT$1 in trust accounts; the total number of tokens is equal to the trust balance. It also regularly publishes trust balances and undergoes auditor attestation/certification.
The company has repeatedly stated that “stablecoins are stored-value cards” and criticized stablecoins as being hype pushed by crypto industry promoters. Tech YouTuber Qu Bo Technology Classroom said that at the time, it actually****praised Taiwan Stablecoin as “Taiwan’s first stablecoin,” and said it was very much looking forward to blockchain’s future development in Taiwan.**

Image source: Qu Bo Technology Classroom fan page | Taiwan Stablecoin issued by Green World Fintech Services, regarded as Taiwan’s first “TWD stablecoin” at the time

However, Taiwan Stablecoin lacked market demand and real-world use cases at the time. It was quickly delisted by partner exchanges and quietly exited. With Taiwan’s legal framework gradually becoming clearer and international attention on stablecoins increasing, whether Green World will restart the project—or whether other payment providers will jump in to compete for this opportunity—is worth watching.

Is Taiwan’s stablecoin ready by 2026?
Under the current draft requirements, stablecoin issuers must properly reserve the fiat currency they receive, and they may not distribute interest or rewards—this also raises questions about how issuers will profit in the future.
Insiders told the Economic Daily that the purpose of banks issuing stablecoins is to further seize opportunities in blockchain finance and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA).
FSC Vice Chairman Zhuang Xiuyuan previously also revealed that some Taiwanese import and export traders have already begun using stablecoins for actual settlements and payments. When the amount of stablecoins accumulated by traders gradually increases, they will inevitably look for ways to connect with traditional financial institutions.
After years of failure for Taiwan Stablecoin, is the market truly ready for Taiwan’s stablecoin? Zhuang Xiuyuan said she is optimistic that, driven by supply-chain payment demand, new demand for New Taiwan Dollar stablecoins will emerge domestically, and at this point the role of financial institutions is precisely to provide seamless integration between fiat currency and stablecoins.