KFTC has operated the Electronic Banking System since 2001, making it the world's oldest continuously running real-time retail payment service. The system enables instant fund transfers between any bank account in South Korea. Every Korean commercial bank and non-bank financial institution participates in EBS.
EBS processed 9.1 billion transactions in 2023, according to ACI Worldwide. That translates to approximately 25 million transactions per day. The aggregate daily settlement value across all KFTC-operated retail payment systems reached KRW 106.4 trillion in 2024, according to the Bank of Korea. This figure encompasses EBS, the Giro system, check clearing, and other KFTC services. EBS-specific daily settlement values are not published separately.
Under the current settlement model, EBS credits funds to recipients in real time. Interbank positions settle on a deferred net basis through BOK-Wire+ the following business day. This creates overnight credit exposure for receiving banks on funds already made available to customers. The Bank of Korea's 2024 Payment and Settlement Systems Report disclosed that BOK is studying the introduction of RTGS-based rapid fund transfer to replace the current DNS framework. An RTGS approach would settle each transaction individually in central bank money, eliminating the overnight settlement lag.
South Korea's payment infrastructure is also extending cross-border. Bank Indonesia and the Bank of Korea launched bidirectional QR-based cross-border payments on April 1, 2026, enabling transactions in local currencies between the two countries. The settlement architecture study covers a system that has operated with the same deferred net settlement model since its 2001 launch.