KSNet Signs MOU With Solana Foundation to Pilot Solana Pay and x402 AI Payments for Korean Merchants

Korean payment and settlement company KSNet signed a memorandum of understanding with the Solana SOL$74.59+1.9%Solana Foundation on July 30 at its headquarters in Seocho-gu, Seoul, committing to run two sequential proof-of-concept projects: one integrating Solana Pay into its existing merchant payment network, and a second testing x402, the HTTP-based payment protocol designed for AI agent transactions, against its internally-developed AI payment system, the company announced.

KSNet has operated Korean merchant payment infrastructure for 26 years across both online and offline channels. The two PoCs move sequentially, with the Solana Pay integration launching before the x402 work begins.

Two Proof-of-Concept Projects: Merchant Settlement and AI Payments

The Solana Pay integration connects KSNet's merchant payment network to Solana Pay standards. Per the MOU terms, the pilot must strictly reflect domestic anti-money laundering requirements to block abnormal fund flows, link to Korea's existing Korean won settlement network, and minimize exchange rate and liquidity risks for merchants.

Separately, KSNet will link x402 to its AI-based payment system, which the company says is currently in internal verification. KSNet describes x402 as an open, internet-native payment protocol that uses the HTTP 402 status code to allow AI agents to make small payments autonomously without requiring login credentials or credit card authentication.

KSNet chief executive Park Han-han framed the initiative around safety, saying the company would draw on its payment and settlement experience to build the most reliable infrastructure possible for users.

Why Card Rails Cannot Process Sub-Won Machine-to-Machine Payments

KSNet's rationale for the x402 PoC points to a structural limitation in the existing Korean payment system. The company states that fast transaction processing and extremely low fees are essential for machine-to-machine ultra-small autonomous payment models, and that existing credit card networks have fundamental limitations when handling ultra-small payments of one won or less due to multi-level fee structures.

Acquiring fees, interchange fees, and settlement costs accumulate at each layer of a card transaction; even at the lowest rates, those fixed costs make sub-won transactions economically incoherent on card rails regardless of the merchant's willingness to accept them.

x402, incubated by the Coinbase Development Platform team, resolves this by embedding payment into standard HTTP requests using the 402 status code. A server returning 402 tells a client to pay before accessing a resource. The receiving party can be an API, a data feed, or an AI agent operating without a human in the loop. According to Solana's official figures, Solana accounts for 70% of monthly x402 transaction volume, with more than 37 million transactions processed and more than 20,000 buyers and sellers on the protocol.

For KSNet, the question the PoC addresses is whether x402 can meet the throughput and fee requirements of the AI payment workflows the company is already prototyping internally. The MOU does not commit to production deployment; it commits to testing technical suitability.

South Korea's Expanding Solana Payment Network

KSNet's deal follows a series of agreements between major Korean financial institutions and the Solana Foundation this year. KG Inicis, South Korea's largest payment gateway by transaction volume, signed a Solana Foundation MOU in June to test stablecoin checkout, subscription billing, and tokenized loyalty across its roughly 190,000 merchants. Toss Bank signed its own MOU in June for stablecoin cross-border remittance PoC work, and Shinhan Card, South Korea's largest card issuer, struck a similar agreement in April.

KSNet's announcement adds both a new institutional participant and a distinct technical focus. The Solana Pay integration overlaps with what other Korean payment entities are exploring; the x402 AI payment PoC is the first commitment from a Korean incumbent payment company to test the protocol against a production-adjacent internal system.

What comes out of the sequential pilots and whether either advances past the PoC stage depends on the AML architecture KSNet builds for the first project and the technical fit results from the second. The MOU establishes intent; the proof of concepts will supply the data.