One Hong Kong issuer holds two-thirds of Korea's crypto-card downloads

Two-thirds of the counted downloads belong to one company: RedotPay's roughly 25,000 out of about 38,000 is 66 percent ^[11]. The remainder, some 13,000 installs spread across every other app ^[14], is the part that would have to be chased issuer by issuer.

The window matters as much as the total. January of last year to the end of July this year is 19 months. That works out at about 2,000 downloads a month across all the apps and about 1,300 a month for RedotPay alone ^[12][13]. A download and a funded wallet are two different things, and the Tiger Research and Chainalysis work commissioned by The Seoul Economic Daily counts installs, not the won value of payments ^[16].

The taxable event is defined per payment. If a stablecoin is worth more when it is spent than when it was acquired, the difference is cryptocurrency income ^[3]. Tax authorities argue that spending disposes of the asset exactly as converting into won or swapping into another token does ^[4]. A holder who taps the card twice a day owes the calculation twice a day.

An official in the cryptocurrency industry, quoted by The Seoul Economic Daily, said there are "practical limits to identifying each of the countless small payments made on overseas platforms." That holds even where taxes are assessed after the fact through audits ^[10]. Selling or swapping on a domestic exchange leaves a record with a local operator; a position funded and spent inside a single overseas platform never passes through a domestic financial institution ^[9].

In my view the first filing season gets decided at the issuer level. With 66 percent of installs sitting with one Hong Kong company ^[11], a single data feed is worth more than any volume of individual audits. Two other readings are available. The first is that about 2,000 downloads a month ^[12] is a small enough base that the lost revenue is trivial, and that the rule exists to keep the definition of a disposal consistent across cash-out, swap and payment ^[4]. The second is that convenience is precisely why these cards spread here ^[15], so the base grows once the tax makes cashing out on a domestic exchange the more expensive route.

What would break the first reading is a published won figure for card spending. If the typical user is moving real money, individual audits start to cover their cost and the tax office does not need a foreign issuer's cooperation to collect.