Kakaopay Securities Partners with Dinari and Ondo to Tokenize Korean Stocks

Kakaopay Securities just signed deals with two major tokenization players. The firm announced agreements with Dinari and Ondo Finance to explore putting Korean-listed equities on blockchain rails and pushing them out to international investors.

The scope here is pretty broad. Kakaopay wants to handle three things at once: sourcing Korean shares, building the tokenization infrastructure to wrap them, and then distributing those tokens to buyers sitting outside South Korea. Neither deal comes with a hard launch date. No specific Korean companies have been chosen yet as underlying assets, according to Dinari CEO Gabe Otte — so it’s early days, but the direction is clear enough.

Not a small ambition.

How Dinari and Ondo Each Fit In

The Dinari piece centers on a proof of concept built around Dinari’s dShares model. That model keeps shareholder rights intact — dividends, voting, the usual protections investors expect when they hold equity. Otte didn’t name any Korean companies lined up for the first phase, but the plan is to eventually pull in Korean-listed equities as the actual underlying assets once the groundwork is laid.

Ondo’s role is different. Kakaopay’s agreement with Ondo focuses on building a system for sourcing and safeguarding Korean-listed shares before they ever get tokenized. Kakaopay will run an omnibus account to hold those shares on behalf of foreign investors — essentially acting as the custodian layer. From there, the companies plan to keep working through the mechanics of token issuance and redemption, and they’re being careful about it. Both South Korean rules and overseas regulatory requirements are on the table, and neither side seems to be rushing past that.

It’s worth noting: the tokenized stock market globally hit roughly $3.2 billion as of late September. That sounds big, but the market is almost entirely US equities and ETFs right now. Companies like Strategy, Circle, Nvidia, and Tesla dominate the space alongside major US stock ETFs. Korean equities are basically absent from that picture, which is exactly what Kakaopay and its partners are trying to change — or at least explore changing.

South Korea’s Regulatory Shift Creates the Opening

None of this would be moving forward without some regulatory tailwind. South Korea’s National Assembly approved changes in January that recognize distributed ledgers as valid for securities registries. That’s a meaningful shift — it means token securities can legally be issued and circulated under the new framework. The Korea Securities Depository is now working on connecting existing securities systems to blockchain infrastructure to make the whole thing operational.

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The framework takes effect in February 2027. That’s probably the real clock Kakaopay is working against. There’s no timeline set for commercial launch of tokenized Korean equities, but the regulatory runway now exists in a way it didn’t before, and that’s what’s pulling firms like Dinari and Ondo into the conversation.

Tokenized securities have picked up real momentum across Asia more broadly. Regulatory sandboxes, pilot programs, and institutional interest have all grown in recent years, and South Korea’s move to codify distributed ledger technology as legitimate securities infrastructure puts it closer to where Singapore and Japan have been pushing. The question for Kakaopay isn’t really whether the technology works — it’s whether the legal plumbing on both ends, Korean and international, can be connected cleanly enough to make cross-border distribution viable.

That’s harder than it sounds. Foreign investors holding tokenized Korean shares through an omnibus account structure still face questions around custody, tax treatment, corporate actions, and what happens when a company on the Korean Stock Exchange does something like a rights issue or a merger. Kakaopay and Ondo are apparently working through those questions, but no details on where they’ve landed.

Unclear if they’ve landed anywhere yet.

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The dShares model Dinari brings to the table has been tested with US equities before, so there’s at least a working template. Adapting it for Korean-listed companies means dealing with a different regulatory regime, different market hours, and different corporate governance norms — all of which add friction. Whether the proof of concept phase surfaces those problems or smooths them over, it’s hard to say from the outside.

What’s not murky is the market gap Kakaopay is targeting. The $3.2 billion tokenized stock market is almost entirely American. Korean equities — from major conglomerates to mid-cap tech names — aren’t represented in any meaningful way. If Kakaopay can pull this off, it’s not just a product launch. It’s basically opening a new category.

The Korea Securities Depository is still building out the blockchain connectivity needed to make the February 2027 framework actually functional. Kakaopay, Dinari, and Ondo are running their proof of concept work in parallel with that infrastructure build.