Get daily crypto briefings and weekly Bitcoin market reports delivered right to your inbox.

Share this article

A card provider affiliated with one of the largest financial banking groups in Korea has made its first transaction using OmiseGO (OMG) as a validator.

ShinhanCard used a plasma childchain to make a small transaction that was then validated by the OMG network. In a short video demonstration of the proof-of-concept (PoC), the card operator sent a small volume of tokens – made to resemble ShinhanCard’s reward points – to an example user wallet.

“This proof of concept was really helpful to understand what we can do with plasma and blockchain itself,” said Arthur, a manager of ShinhanCard’s Digital Planning Team, in a press release. “We think that plasma will bring a more convenient, cheaper and more decentralized method for payment to the real world.”

Plasma is a scaling solution for Ethereum (ETH). It cuts unnecessary data from the root chain, with only completed transactions broadcasted to the public blockchain. It is less energy intensive and makes the transaction process faster.

Today’s PoC comes ten months after ShinhanCard and Omise signed a MoU to explore how blockchain could be integrated into the bank’s Fintech infrastructure. ShinhanCard will now explore using OmiseGO to enhance borderless interoperability and expand its loyalty programme internationally.

The existing reward points scheme -known as ShinhanPay FAN (Finance and Network) – is already widespread in South Korea. ShinhanCard replicated FAN points in its recent demo, minting them onto a Plasma childchain using an Ethereum smart contract. The two companies said, at the time of the MoU, that they wanted to explore the development of tech solutions to support the Shinhan FAN card.

If the company decides to adopt OmiseGO, users will be able to exchange loyalty points with merchants and other users of the blockchain. If that’s successful, ShinhanCard users may also be able to trade digital assets using the OMG blockchain.

“As per the design of the OMG Network and once it is publicly available, merchants such as ShinhanCard can mint and transact digital assets on the OMG network. Users can use the decentralized exchange (DEX) via the eWallet to transact between assets,” an OmiseGO spokesperson said in an email to Crypto Briefing.

OMG

OmiseGO is a blockchain project developed by Thai payments provider, Omise. Based on Ethereum, it wants to offer low-fee financial services to segments of the population without bank accounts. Among other things, OmiseGO uses the plasma scaling solution to facilitate near-instantaneous payment settlement. Nodes stake OMG tokens when validating transactions.

In November, OmiseGO signed a MoU with a Singapore ride-hailing app, exploring how the protocol could improve the taxi service. One suggestion was to use blockchain to accurately log and map data collected from users.

Blockchain-based games company, Hoard, also announced in November it was using OmiseGO as a platform for its new 80’s-style game, Plasma Dog. Hoard said at the time it wanted to show that plasma was an effective protocol for a high-volume of transactions.

Vansa Chatikavanij, OmiseGO’s Managing Director, said today’s news was a promising start, but emphasized that the network had many more potential applications.

In a statement, Chatikavanij said: “Tokenizing and transacting loyalty points across borders is just one application of the OMG Network. We are excited to see how we can further unlock interactions between enterprise ecosystems.”

The author is invested in digital assets, including ETH which is mentioned in this article.

Join the conversation on Telegram and Twitter