Recently, interesting developments have emerged in South Korea’s payments industry. A major payment provider called NHN KCP is reportedly preparing to fully move into the Avalanche ecosystem.

Specifically, together with Ava Labs, it appears they plan to build a payment-focused Layer 1 network on Avalanche. By leveraging the infrastructure of Ava Cloud, they say they will achieve payment approvals on a sub-second basis—potentially welcome news for a payments industry that prioritizes speed.

Because NHN KCP has decades of payment processing experience, this should be more than just a technical experiment; it’s likely designed with real business use cases in mind. It includes quite practical features such as encryption of on-chain transaction data and a customizable merchant ecosystem.

What’s more, they are exploring new business opportunities such as tokenized deposits, payments using multiple stablecoins, and cross-border transactions. If these come to fruition, it will become clearer how Avalanche can function as payment infrastructure.

However, the project’s launch timing is said to be heavily influenced by developments in South Korea’s cryptocurrency regulatory environment. Depending on how regulations progress, this L1 network will be implemented when the time comes. South Korea’s regulatory environment is also likely to affect Avalanche’s future growth.