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 on a potential stablecoin issuer list
Taiwan’s draft Virtual Asset Service Act has been passed by the Executive Yuan. Although it has not yet gone through the third reading in the Legislative Yuan, the Financial Supervisory Commission has been actively working on its subsidiary regulations. The initial plan is to allow domestic financial institutions only to issue stablecoins, encouraging many industry players to jump in.

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 following summarizes these six banks’ strategies in blockchain and virtual-asset-related areas:

• CTBC Bank: Approved by the Financial Supervisory Commission to pilot virtual-asset custody services. In the first phase, it focuses on Bitcoin and Ether, using cold wallets and private-key sharding technology for management. It has also publicly recruited blockchain engineers in 2025.
• Cathay United Bank: Approved to pilot virtual-asset custody services. It targets high-net-worth individual clients and participates in the Financial Supervisory Commission’s RWA tokenization working group, planning to test on-chain bond issuance.
• Taishin Bank: Currently receiving guidance on custody services. Recently, it partnered with Taiwan Exchange HOYA BIT to offer New Taiwan Dollar trust services, providing 24/7 deposits and withdrawals.
• KGI Bank: After obtaining pilot qualification, it partnered with Taiwan’s regulated trading platforms such as MaiCoin and BitoPro. It will transfer part of its assets into the bank’s cold wallet for custody, and previously launched the “KGI Coin Enjoy Card,” offering card swipe rewards to redeem crypto assets.
• Union Bank: In addition to being approved to pilot custody services, it also acquired approximately 9.67% equity in MaiCoin through investment, strengthening its participation in Taiwan’s crypto market.
• Fubon Bank: Fubon, together with Taiwan Mobile, set up “TWEX Taiwan Big Virtual Asset Exchange,” and Fubon provides trust custody and cold-wallet technology mechanisms.

Besides the above banks, Taiwan’s state-owned banks, “First Bank” and “Hua Nan Bank,” also told the Commercial Times that they have a strong interest in stablecoins. The chairman of E.SUN Financial Holding has also stated that the institution will not be absent from the stablecoin and tokenization markets.
In addition, the strategic distribution cooperation between blockchain enterprise settlement infrastructure provider Capital Layer and Taiwan’s largest systems integrator, DunYang Technology, is also seen as part of the plan for stablecoin deployment.

2018: Taiwan’s first “NT dollar stablecoin” quietly exits the market
On the other hand, years ago, Taiwan’s third-party payment provider Green World Fintech Services launched the CryptoDT blockchain financial service and issued the Taiwan Stablecoin (TWDT-ETH). It uses the Ethereum token standard ERC-20, with each token pegged 1:1 to the value of the New Taiwan Dollar. The circulating TWDT-ETH represents the backing of NT$1 per token from trust accounts; the total number of tokens equals the trust balance. It also regularly publishes balances and accepts certification by accountants.
Recently, it has repeatedly said that “stablecoins are stored-value cards” and criticized stablecoins as hype by crypto industry promoters. The YouTube tech educator Qu Bo Technology Classroom, at the time, actually praised TWDT-ETH as “Taiwan’s first stablecoin,” and said it was very much looking forward to future blockchain development in Taiwan.

Image source: Qu Bo Technology Classroom fan page | The Taiwan Stablecoin launched by Green World Fintech Services was once regarded as Taiwan’s first “NT dollar stablecoin”

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

In 2026, will Taiwan’s stablecoins be ready?
Under the current draft requirements, stablecoin issuers must keep proper reserves of the fiat currency they receive and may not distribute interest or rewards, which also makes people curious about how issuers will generate profits in the future.
Sources familiar with the matter 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).
The deputy chairwoman of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Zhuang Xiuyuan, previously also revealed that some Taiwanese import and export traders have already started actually settling and paying with stablecoins. When the amount of stablecoins accumulated by traders gradually increases, they will inevitably seek to connect with traditional financial institutions.
After TWDT-ETH’s failure for years, is the market truly ready to welcome Taiwan’s stablecoins? Zhuang Xiuyuan said she is optimistic that, driven by demand for supply-chain payments, domestic demand for New Taiwan Dollar stablecoins will emerge, and that at this time the role of financial institutions is precisely to provide a seamless bridge between fiat currency and stablecoins.