Pakistan's stablecoin moment: what Seoul, Stockholm and Hong Kong signal
Stablecoins are moving from the periphery of financial regulation to the centre of it, and the past week's crop of reports shows how differently jurisdictions are approaching that shift. South Korea's central bank plans to draft an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act with the government before year-end to regulate stablecoins as a means of payment, according to a written submission to the National Assembly's annual audit reported by Korean outlet Digital Asset and covered by Bitcoin Magazine. Sweden's Riksbank, meanwhile, has asked lawmakers to prepare legislation for a digital krona, warning that foreign-currency stablecoins and a planned digital euro could erode the currency's role in payments, Reuters reported via CoinDesk. Thailand's central bank has gone further into the specifics, releasing a consultation paper that proposes 1:1 deposit backing for baht-denominated stablecoins and a ban on issuers paying interest or offering returns, according to Token Times.
The contrast with Pakistan is instructive. Where Seoul, Stockholm and Bangkok are publishing drafts, consultations and legislative timetables, the material contains no equivalent Pakistani stablecoin framework. What it does contain is demand-side data. Binance's regional figures put users aged 18-29 at 54 per cent of its Pakistani user base, above the 50 per cent figure for MENA and Pakistan combined, and 52.6 per cent of verified Pakistani users have engaged with two or more Binance products, according to the exchange. Binance also cites its own earlier research showing MENA is the fastest-growing region for stablecoin savings on Binance Earn, with the region's share of global stablecoin balances on the platform rising from 5.53 per cent to 9.21 per cent, and its share of global stablecoin trading volume on Binance rising from 7 per cent in 2023 to 11 per cent in 2026. Those are Binance's own numbers about its own platform, not a measure of the Pakistani market as a whole, but they point to a user base that is young, multi-product and increasingly comfortable with dollar-denominated instruments.
The regulatory models on offer differ in kind, not just degree. South Korea's planned amendment would treat stablecoins as a "means of payment", a defined term in Korean forex law covering instruments whose cross-border movement must be reported. As Bitcoin Magazine notes, that is a plan to write a bill, not a bill in itself: there is no draft text, no named token and no passage date, and on that reading the amendment would put dollar stablecoins under the same controls as a wire to New York rather than make them legal tender. The Bank of Korea pointed to settlement outside the banking system, mixers and regulatory gaps around personal wallets as factors that ease illegal transactions. The forex work runs in parallel with the Digital Asset Basic Act, the licensing and stablecoin-issuance framework flagged in the government's 2026 growth strategy; Financial Services Commission chairman Lee Eog-weon told lawmakers the consultations are in their final stage. Korea's crypto income tax is due to take effect on 1 January 2027 after three postponements, according to The Block, and lawmakers have questioned taxing a market before the law defining it is passed.
Sweden's approach is defensive rather than facilitative. The Riksbank has not taken a position on issuing an e-krona, but wants lawmakers to start preparing legislation now because the work would take at least five years, according to CoinDesk. Deputy Governor Per Jansson told Reuters that if Swedish kronor are not available in a usable digital form, "the krona may not be able to compete with other, more convenient digital payment instruments that can easily be used across borders". The bank sees little near-term risk from foreign-currency stablecoins but says the long-term threat remains, and it views an e-krona as a backup payment option during power or telecom outages. Just 5 per cent of Swedes surveyed used cash for their last purchase, according to Riksbank data cited in the report. Thailand's consultation, with its 1:1 deposit backing and its ban on issuer-paid returns, sits closer to the Hong Kong model, where the HKMA granted its first stablecoin issuer licences in April to HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial, a Standard Chartered-led venture, and HSBC has now begun rolling out its RedCoin token to more than 3.3 million PayMe users, according to CoinDesk.
The demand side is not only retail. Raffles Family Office, headquartered in Singapore and Hong Kong, is expanding its digital assets arm Revo, which won Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission licences in February, to serve younger Asian billionaires holding wealth in stablecoins. Its founder and CEO Chi-Man Kwan told Fortune that "even if their assets are U.S.-denominated, it's going to be in stablecoins", and that "ten years from now, people may transact mostly in stablecoins". A 2026 survey by fund administration provider Ocorian found that 86 per cent of family-office principals and senior executives are including crypto in their investment strategies, though Wealth Briefing Asia notes that regulatory and reporting challenges often stop family offices from fully embracing crypto assets. The same tension applies to any Pakistani institution considering stablecoin services: client appetite may run ahead of the licensing and reporting infrastructure available to serve it.
The macro backdrop adds a geopolitical dimension that smaller economies cannot ignore. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco cited by American Banker puts stablecoin issuers' holdings of U.S. Treasuries at roughly $200 billion, with Tether accounting for $141 billion, and finds that rising issuer demand for short-dated Treasuries is reducing the impact of foreign governments selling U.S. debt. The Fed estimates that if current trends sustain, issuer ownership of short-duration Treasuries could reach $400 billion by 2030, while Standard Chartered projects the stablecoin market capitalisation to surpass $2 trillion by 2028. This suggests that the dollar stablecoin is not a neutral payment rail: it is a channel through which offshore demand for dollar assets is intermediated, and jurisdictions that host large stablecoin user bases are, in effect, participants in that market whether or not they regulate it. What is not yet clear is how a country like Pakistan, with a young and active retail user base but no published stablecoin framework in this material, would capture the benefits of that participation while managing the currency-substitution risk that Sweden's central bank has explicitly flagged.
The comparison with Russia is a reminder that regulation can arrive quickly once a decision is taken. The Bank of Russia added a 17th company to its register of crypto exchange providers on Thursday, up from four when the register opened on 6 October, and its digital depository register now has eight members, according to DL News. Sberbank and VTB hold both licences; VTB's broker carried out its first stablecoin deals for corporate clients on 6 October, and VTB's Vitaly Sergeichuk said the bank expects to open access to digital currency trading for a broad range of investors in November and December 2026. Non-qualified investors will be able to buy only the most liquid cryptocurrencies, up to 300,000 roubles a year through any one intermediary, and only after passing a test, the central bank said in July. The Russian case shows that a full licensing stack can be assembled in weeks once the political decision is made, which makes the absence of a published Pakistani timetable more notable than the absence of a law.
What to watch next is therefore less about whether Pakistan will have a stablecoin conversation than about who will frame it. Three markers are worth tracking. First, whether the State Bank of Pakistan or the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan publishes a consultation or draft framework comparable to Thailand's, and on what backing and yield terms; the Thai proposal's ban on issuer-paid returns is the kind of detail that determines whether a stablecoin is a payment instrument or a deposit substitute. Second, whether Korean-style forex reporting obligations are considered for cross-border stablecoin flows, given that the Bank of Korea's amendment is explicitly aimed at the cross-border movement of value rather than at domestic retail use. Third, whether Pakistani banks and fintechs follow the HSBC route of embedding a token in an existing app, which requires an issuer licence that does not yet appear to exist in the material. Until one of those markers moves, the Pakistani stablecoin story is a demand story without a supply-side rulebook, and the risk is that the gap is filled by offshore issuance rather than domestic policy.
