Korea Blockchain Week 2019 was a blast, dubbed as South Korea’s largest annual blockchain event that took place in the city of Seoul. The tech-savvy country is known for being at the front-tier of DLT innovation and is home to plentiful of startups looking to disrupt the world with blockchain. South Korea is instrumental in the crypto industry’s ongoing boom, and one particular project focusing on stablecoin technology, Terra, was one startup to make headlines at KWB2019, rolling out four major announcements;

Yanolja is to officially integrated CHAI, allowing users to pay and book a Hotel using South Korea’s most popular Accommodation/Hospitality service platform.

Terra is venturing into the offline payment markets with CU that allows consumers to pay for Groceries at over 14,000 convenience stores.



The launch of the CHAI debit card that’s scheduled early in 2020 is to be powered & issued by BC card, South Korea’s no.1 payment processing company.



Partnerships announcement with Shinsegae (SSG) Duty-Free, in a bid to support global payments starting with Hong Kong.

Terra in a Nut-shell

The startup looks to power a next-generation payments network with the help of blockchain to transform the payments industry. Terra itself is the underlying currency in a decentralized payments system and an algorithmic stablecoin issuer, pegged to the Korean Won. The startup is also a fully licensed payment operator in Korea with plans of becoming licensed in key markets such as Singapore, Japan and other Asian nations.

Terra’s mobile payment dApp, CHAI is a licensed Korean payment gateway that’s available on TMON – the largest eCommerce platform in the country. The app is currently listed on mobile app stores, surpassing KakaoPay on the Google Play Store and Apple App store, with 430,000 users signed up since its early inception. As of today, Terra is working alongside with 14 of the top 15 South Korean commercial banks to be able to provide fiat off-ramps to all CHAI users.

Aside from that, Terra is establishing a bridge between Fiat-Crypto, in such a way that involves a banking integration that would allow users to pay without having to deal with the complex procedures involved in spending crypto; thus eliminating the need to manage private/public keys. The whole idea is to make Crypto spendable and more acceptable amongst merchants while encouraging the mass adoption of such alternative digital assets through overcoming all the barriers that plague the industry; poor adoption, and high volatility.

Achieving new milestones and expansion plans

Making 4 major announcements at Korea Blockchain Week 2019, Terra’s has managed to make heads turn given the fact that several milestones were revealed that would provide the audience a glimpse of the future as on what the startup is set out to achieve.

The issuance of the CHAI debit card through the partnership with BC Card empowers users to spend cryptocurrencies anywhere in the world where debit cards are accepted. This would gradually allow Cryptocurrencies to become a viable payment option across a range of markets and jurisdictions, taking full advantage of the MasterCard gateway.

By early 2020, residents in South Korea will be able to shop at CU, the East Asian nation’s largest convenience store chain. The partnership will allow Terra to venture into the offline payments sector, a move that will enable consumers to utilize stablecoin ‘Terra’ to perform transactions. This is to keep the adoption momentum up to allow crypto to go even further mainstream, so that one day we may see digital currencies being used side by side with conventional currencies and to become as ubiquitous as the Korean Won.

The partnership with SSG marks the first global expansion for Terra outside of Korea that looks to target b2b merchants in Hong Kong. By expanding to a global market, the future of CHAI looks to make the management of Cryptocurrency hassle-free for both Merchants and end-users. A localized app dubbed ‘’CHAI DF’’ was launched to cater to foreign markets that exist outside of Korea.

In the long run, Terra hopes to become a leading payments service provider in the country and to secure a fair share of the global payments market. With the conference based in South Korea, it should be no surprise as to why Terra captures the attention of the crowd. Each major announcement represents an important milestone and plan of action such venturing into offline payments, issuance of a debit card, and moving forward with global expansion. KBW 2019;s main highlight would be Terra’s ongoing quest to become one of the biggest payment gateway networks to bridge the gap between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies.