South Korea's Shinhan Bank will begin serving bitcoin cross-border remittances through the platform Streami Inc, a startup dedicated to this type of service. The bank holds to become the first bank in South Korea to use the distributed accounting and a digital currency to swindle outside its borders. Shinhan Bank will start using Bitcoin technology to make remittances between South Korea and China, but using Honk Kong as an intermediary for legal issues.



The way in which the Korean bank remittance service will run is first remitting money in fiat currency to Honk Kong, the city where these funds will be received and changed to Bitcoin and subsequently sent to China, and there it will again be converted into local currency.



Although the process description sounds a bit cumbersome, Shinhan bank is not betting on an unworkable procedure, since the change of cryptocurrency a fiat currency is a process that takes only seconds. As the speed is one of the greatest benefits distributed accounting can bring to remittances industry.



The use of intermediaries is necessary because South Korea for now does not have the related regulations to carry out remittances in Bitcoin from their country, although it is expected for 2017 its plan to institutionalize and regularize digital currencies, good news for financial institutions interested in blockchain technology.

