‘Split Remittance’ to Be Blocked... Koo Yun-cheol Announces Overseas Remittance Integration System to Launch Next Year

The government announced plans to introduce a system as early as next year that will integrate and manage overseas remittance records from banks, FinTech companies, card firms, and securities companies, thereby strengthening oversight of foreign currency outflows.
On the 16th (local time), Koo Yun-cheol, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, visited Washington, D.C. for the G20 Finance Ministers’ Meeting and stated in a briefing with reporters, “We will establish an Overseas Remittance Integration System to prevent excessive outflows of foreign currency.”
Currently, only banks use the government system to monitor the annual limit of $100,000 per person for overseas remittances without supporting documents in real time. For example, if an individual remits $70,000 through Bank A, other banks will automatically restrict additional remittances to $30,000.
In contrast, non-bank sectors such as FinTech lack a real-time monitoring system. Instead, they are subject to indirect regulations that limit undocumented overseas remittances to $50,000 per company per year for each individual. However, with 26 registered small-scale overseas remittance companies in Korea, it is virtually impossible to track cases where individuals use multiple companies to make so-called 'split remittances.'
For instance, if an individual sends $50,000 each through 20 different FinTech companies, totaling $1 million, there is currently no way to detect this at a glance, creating a regulatory blind spot.
To address this issue, the government is working to establish the Overseas Remittance Integration System (ORIS), which will integrate and manage individuals’ overseas remittance records across all sectors based on the Bank of Korea (BOK) foreign exchange network. Once ORIS is operational, remittance records for each individual will be stored on the BOK network, allowing all remittance service providers, including banks and FinTech companies, to check each person’s remaining annual remittance limit in real time.
The government plans to begin a pilot operation of ORIS at the end of this month, aiming for full implementation in January next year. In line with the system’s introduction, the government will revise foreign exchange transaction regulations to unify the different remittance limits for banks and non-banks into a single annual limit per individual. The current bank sector limit of $100,000 per year is being considered as the unified cap.

junjun@fnnews.com Choi Yong-jun Reporter