Samsung announced stablecoin support for Samsung Wallet at Galaxy Unpacked but disclosed no issuer, blockchain, or launch date. A $408 million Dunamu investment and stalled South Korean stablecoin legislation reveal the infrastructure play behind the headline.
Samsung announced stablecoin support for Samsung Wallet at Galaxy Unpacked on July 22. The on-stage demo showed a USDC balance with send, receive, and add funds buttons. Product manager Lee Dinham said the company would embrace “new forms of digital value, including stablecoins” and described Samsung Wallet as “the foundation for an interconnected financial ecosystem across Galaxy devices and services.”
Samsung did not name an issuer, a blockchain, a custody partner, a launch window, or a list of eligible countries. It did not confirm a partnership with Circle, the issuer of USDC. Cointelegraph, CryptoSlate, and CoinDesk each reported that Samsung had not answered their requests for comment on partner, chain, or timeline details.
The 800 million figure Samsung promoted is the company’s target for devices with Galaxy AI by end of 2026. It does not represent Samsung Wallet users, stablecoin-eligible devices, or phones that will receive the feature at launch. Samsung has nearly 19 million Wallet users in South Korea alone but has not disclosed global active wallet numbers or existing crypto user counts.
On July 30, five days after Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung SDS president Lee Joon-hee told analysts that the Dunamu investment was made “to enter the digital asset infrastructure business rather than as a financial investment.” He said Samsung SDS had been discussing stablecoin infrastructure, AI-powered payments, and virtual asset financial system integration with Dunamu. The comments, reported by crypto.news on July 31, marked the first time a Samsung executive publicly identified stablecoins as the specific focus of the partnership.
In May, Samsung Securities, Samsung SDS, and Samsung Card agreed to buy a combined 4% stake in Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, for 612.8 billion won (about $408 million). Samsung Securities plans to work with Dunamu on tokenized securities. Samsung SDS had already been selected to build South Korea’s tokenized securities system. Samsung Card is exploring digital payments, including a potential won-pegged stablecoin, and intends to integrate its payment network with Dunamu’s ecosystem through Samsung’s Monimo financial platform.
Joseph Goh, director and head of Asia Pacific at crypto investment banking firm Areta, told CoinDesk that “the wallet announcement secured distribution; SDS and Dunamu will secure the infrastructure beneath it.” He described the Dunamu investment as “the more telling half” of Samsung’s strategy, arguing that Samsung aims to build the infrastructure itself rather than rely on third-party providers.
Samsung Blockchain Keystore launched with the Galaxy S10 in 2019, using the Knox security platform to store private keys in a hardware-isolated environment. The wallet supported Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron, with ERC and TRC token compatibility. Ledger Nano S and Nano X integration followed the same year.
These were enthusiast features. They did not integrate with Samsung Pay or the broader wallet experience. The Coinbase partnership in July 2025 changed the integration model. Samsung Pay became a funding method inside the Coinbase app for users in the United States and Canada. By October 2025, Samsung Wallet offered direct Coinbase access to Galaxy users, including a promotional three-month Coinbase One subscription and trading credits for first-time crypto purchasers.
Seven years after the keystore launched, Samsung has not disclosed how many Galaxy owners have ever opened it. The company has not published active crypto user counts for Samsung Wallet. The Coinbase integration targeted 75 million United States Galaxy owners, but Samsung has not said how many of those owners actually activated crypto features.
President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law on July 18, 2025, creating the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoin issuers. The law requires one-to-one reserves in high-quality liquid assets and monthly attestations of reserve composition audited by a registered accounting firm. By July 2028, non-compliant stablecoins can no longer be offered to United States users.
In South Korea, the Financial Services Commission is preparing the Digital Asset Basic Act. The draft, unveiled in April 2026, requires stablecoin issuers to obtain authorization, maintain 100% or greater reserves in high-quality assets, and ensure full redemption rights. Passage has stalled in the National Assembly over a central dispute: who should be authorized to issue Korean won-pegged stablecoins. The Bank of Korea has pushed for a rule limiting issuance to bank-led consortiums holding at least 51% ownership. Implementation is targeted for late 2026 or 2027.
Goh described Samsung’s positioning as intentional. He believes Samsung aims “to be positioned in both dollar and won stablecoins while Korea’s framework is still being discussed.”
Neither Apple Pay nor Google Wallet offers native stablecoin support. Google has partnered with Coinbase and BitPay for limited crypto card functionality in Google Wallet, but those integrations stop at the card layer and do not extend to native token balances. Apple has taken no public steps toward stablecoin integration.
Yat Siu, executive chairman of Animoca Brands, described Samsung’s move as “a feature set rather than an attempt to build a super app.” The integration could give Samsung an advantage over Apple and Google in serving crypto users, he said, but applications and merchants will need to make stablecoins useful for everyday spending. Samsung is an investor in Animoca Brands.
Robby Yung, CEO of Investments at Animoca Brands, agreed that the move is positive for crypto adoption but was “not sure that this puts Samsung at an advantage over crypto-native platforms.”
Ben Nadareski, CEO and co-founder of Solstice, framed the challenge as “distribution catching up to liquidity.” For years, crypto had deep trading venues and weak paths into daily spending. Samsung Wallet points the other direction, but the path from a mockup at a product launch to a functioning stablecoin payment at a checkout terminal involves decisions Samsung has not yet made public.
The strongest counterargument to the Samsung stablecoin thesis is that the company announced a direction without a product. Every critical design choice, including which issuer backs the balance, which chain settles the transaction, who holds custody, and which markets receive the feature first, remains undisclosed. Until those decisions are public, the announcement describes potential, not capability.
Samsung’s own history with crypto features that never reached mainstream usage is the clearest precedent. The gap between “available on” and “used by” is typically enormous in preinstalled mobile features. The 800 million figure is a device target for Galaxy AI, not a stablecoin user projection. If past performance is any guide, default availability and actual adoption are separated by an order of magnitude.
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