The battle for stablecoins in Taiwan heats up! Rumors suggest that "6 banks" may be the first to issue them.

Author: Ariel, Crypto City

6 Taiwanese banks are on a potential shortlist for stablecoin issuance
A draft of Taiwan’s “Virtual Asset Services Act” has been passed by the Executive Yuan, although it has not yet passed the third reading in the Legislative Yuan. The Financial Supervisory Commission is actively working on subsidiary regulations. In an initial plan, only domestic financial institutions would be allowed to issue stablecoins, encouraging many firms to jump in.

According to a report by Economic Daily News, a total of 6 banks are rumored to be the first to issue stablecoins: CTBC Bank, Cathay United Bank, Taishin Bank, KGI Bank, Union Bank, and Taipei Fubon Bank.
The strategy setups of these 6 banks in blockchain and virtual-asset-related fields are summarized as follows:

• CTBC Bank: Approved by the Financial Supervisory Commission to pilot virtual asset custody services. In the first wave, it focuses on Bitcoin and Ether, managing assets via cold wallets and private-key sharding technology. It also previously publicly recruited blockchain engineers in 2025.
• Cathay United Bank: Approved to pilot virtual asset custody services, targeting high-net-worth individual clients, and participating in the Financial Supervisory Commission’s RWA tokenization working group, with plans to trial on-chain bond issuance.
• Taishin Bank: Currently receiving guidance for custody services. Recently, it has partnered with Taiwan Exchange HOYA BIT to offer New Taiwan dollar trust services, providing 24/7 deposit and withdrawal fund flows.
• KGI Bank: After obtaining pilot qualification, it teamed up with MaiCoin, BitoPro, and other legitimate Taiwan trading platforms to transfer part of its assets into the bank’s cold wallet for custody. It also previously launched the “KGI Coin Enjoy Card,” offering rewards redeemable for cryptocurrencies when paying by card.
• Union Bank: In addition to being approved to pilot custody services, it also acquired about 9.67% equity in MaiCoin through investment, strengthening its participation in Taiwan’s crypto market.
• Fubon Bank: Fubon established the “TWEX Taiwan Big Virtual Asset Exchange” through Taiwan Mobile, and Fubon provides trust custody and cold-wallet technology mechanisms.

Besides the above banks, Taiwan’s government-owned banks, “First Bank” and “Hua Nan Bank,” also told Commercial Times that they have a strong interest in stablecoins; the chairman of E.SUN Financial Holding has also stated that the institution will not miss out on the stablecoin and tokenization markets.
In addition, the strategic distribution collaboration between blockchain enterprise settlement infrastructure provider Capital Layer and Taiwan’s largest systems integrator DunYang Technology is also seen as part of efforts to build out stablecoin arrangements.

2018: Taiwan’s first “Taiwan dollar stablecoin” quietly fades out
On the other hand, several years ago, Taiwan’s third-party payment provider Green World Fintech Service launched CryptoDT blockchain financial services and issued Taiwan stablecoin (TWDT-ETH). It adopted the Ethereum token standard ERC-20, with each token pegged 1:1 to the New Taiwan dollar value. The circulating TWDT-ETH represented a guarantee of 1 New Taiwan dollar per token held in trust accounts. The total number of tokens equaled the trust balance, and it regularly published balances and accepted auditor verification.
Recently, it has repeatedly said “stablecoins are stored-value cards” and criticized stablecoins as a tech hype product pushed by crypto industry players. The YouTuber is Qu Bo Technology Classroom, and back then, it actually praised TWDT-ETH as “Taiwan’s first stablecoin,” and said it was very much looking forward to blockchain’s future development in Taiwan.

Image source: Qu Bo Technology Classroom fan page | TWDT-ETH launched by Green World Fintech Service was regarded at the time as Taiwan’s first “NTD stablecoin”

However, at that time TWDT-ETH lacked market demand and real application scenarios. It was soon delisted by partner exchanges and quietly exited the market. With Taiwan’s legal framework gradually becoming clearer and global attention toward stablecoins increasing, whether Green World will bring it back, or whether other payment providers will jump in to compete for this opportunity, is worth watching.

In 2026, are stablecoins ready in Taiwan?
According to the current draft rules, stablecoin issuers must keep proper reserves of the fiat currency they receive, and they may not pay interest or incentives. This also raises questions about how issuers will make profits in the future.
Insiders told the Economic Daily News that the purpose of banks issuing stablecoins is to further seize opportunities in blockchain finance and real-world asset tokenization (RWA).
Previously, the vice chairperson of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Zhuang Xiuyuan, also revealed that some Taiwan import and export traders have already started using stablecoins for actual payments and receipts. When the amount of stablecoins accumulated by traders gradually increases, they will inevitably look to connect with traditional financial institutions.
After TWDT-ETH’s failure for years, has the market really already been ready to welcome Taiwan’s stablecoin? Zhuang Xiuyuan said, she believes that, driven by supply-chain payment needs, new demand for New Taiwan dollar stablecoins will arise domestically, and at this moment, the role played by financial institutions is to provide seamless integration between fiat currency and stablecoins.