Lee Hae-jin, who had stepped back from Naver’s management frontline since 2018 to focus on overseas investments, returned as Naver’s board chairman in March this year after seven years. Lee’s first words to Naver employees upon his return were, “Naver must play its role in the AI era, beyond the internet and mobile era.”
Currently, the revenue share of Naver’s core search business has shrunk from a peak of 78.06% in 2015 to 35.9% in the first half of this year. While the commerce business has filled this gap, concerns about sustained growth persist. Half of Naver Financial’s revenue comes from within the Naver platform. Although Lee accelerated the AI business immediately after taking office, it was clear that AI alone had limitations in overcoming these challenges faced by Naver. As a result, the keyword Lee found as Naver’s breakthrough is digital finance, represented by stablecoins. An IT industry insider said, “All of Naver’s businesses, including shopping, search, and payments, are interconnected,” adding, “By introducing digital finance, Naver can expand its boundaries and lay the foundation for global expansion of existing businesses.”
The business strategy that Lee envisions through collaboration with Dunamu, the operator of Korea’s No. 1 cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, revolves around two axes: globalizing all businesses and securing a new financial infrastructure market. In Lee’s view of Naver’s future, there are no borders. If Naver issues and operates stablecoins in partnership with Dunamu, it can establish a separate payment system from the existing Naver Pay or credit card-based payment systems. By linking this to webtoons, content, or shopping, payments and settlements become possible anywhere overseas, effectively enabling global expansion. Kim Gab-rae, a senior researcher at the Capital Market Research Institute, said, “While there are questions about the need for stablecoins when credit card and payment systems are working well, from the user’s perspective, fees become cheaper and payment barriers are lowered,” adding, “This is particularly because stablecoins remove the need for payment gateways (PG) or value-added network (VAN) companies required for credit card use.” This means Naver can establish a foundation for online commerce business even in countries without established financial infrastructure.
Stablecoins are also essential for global AI business expansion. Stablecoins are ideal when AI agents autonomously execute services across borders. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle Internet Financial, said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in January this year, “The agential economy will be built on a blockchain-based intermediary value exchange system,” predicting that “stablecoins will be used as a major medium of exchange.” Circle is the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. Google, which is waging an AI hegemony war, has already released AP2, a stablecoin payment protocol for AI agents, in collaboration with Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation, and others.
The competitiveness of Naver’s commerce-specialized AI agent under development is also expected to be strengthened. There is a possibility that AI agents will be linked with U.S. Poshmark, Japan’s Soda, Spain’s Wallapop, and Korea’s Naver Plus Store. For example, if a domestic user commands “Running shoes within a budget of 200,000 won,” the agent could find the product in Naver’s global ecosystem and complete the payment with stablecoins. This enhances the competitiveness of Naver’s core commerce business for the future.
Moreover, the cash-generating ability of Upbit, the cryptocurrency exchange operated by Dunamu, could serve as a cash cow for Naver to secure funds for AI research and development. Dunamu recorded an operating profit of 1.1863 trillion won last year. Operating profit for the first half of this year was 549.1 billion won.
Stablecoins themselves are expected to grow into a new core business axis for Naver. There are already expectations within Naver that “finance will grow bigger than commerce.” Lee Ji-eun, an analyst at Daishin Securities, predicted, “In the long term, it becomes possible to generate operating income using deposits secured against stablecoins or to provide loan services using stablecoins as collateral.” Overseas, there are already analyses suggesting that the birth of so-called Amazon Banks, where tech companies based on customer data disrupt traditional financial systems and provide new banking services, is imminent.
It is also expected that a new asset trading market can be established. On Wall Street, led by BlackRock, the trend of tokenization of assets, moving all tradable assets including stocks, real estate, and artworks to blockchain, is becoming visible. This is an area that the blockchain industry, including Dunamu, has long been focusing on. Kim, the senior researcher, said, “Korean won stablecoins could also be introduced for stock trade settlement, in which case transactions would be completed in real-time, accelerating cash flow and increasing transaction convenience,” adding, “If the government creates a system, companies like Naver and Dunamu with technical know-how will have a role to play, rather than traditional financial institutions.”
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