World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture in which President Donald Trump’s family holds key roles, has partnered with MOA Protocol to push its dollar-pegged stablecoin USD1 into real-world payments in South Korea, with medical tourism emerging as an unexpected but central use case.
The partnership centres on integrating USD1 with MOA Protocol’s DeFi asset management service, MOA-Fi, and its MOA Card, a payment card that lets users spend digital assets directly rather than converting them to traditional currency first. A USD1 market is already live within MOA-Fi, letting users deposit USDT across BNB Chain, Tron and Ethereum to access USD1-based asset management, while MOA plans to expand USD1 payment functionality on its card within the year.
Ryan Ballantyne, WLFI’s Chief Business Officer, said the company wants USD1 used in genuine, everyday services rather than confined to exchange trading, and pointed to South Korea’s tech-savvy, digitally fluent user base as the reason for choosing it as the launchpad for the stablecoin’s Asian expansion. He compared USD1’s intended role to Intel’s position in the PC era, underpinning financial services without necessarily being visible to the end user.
Medical tourism wasn’t the plan’s original focus, according to Ballantyne, but research into the sector’s $2bn annual value in South Korea made it an obvious target. MOA Protocol has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Medical Tourism Promotion Association, with plans to let overseas patients pay for medical treatment in South Korea using USD1 through the MOA Card, while also unlocking partnership benefits tied to the transaction. The companies intend to validate the model at hospitals and medical institutions before expanding it into other lifestyle categories, including transportation and travel more broadly.
MOA Protocol CEO Stefan Piech described the company’s ambitions in terms similar to European fintech Revolut, but built around digital assets from the outset rather than bolted onto traditional banking rails. He said the goal is for the MOA Card to function as a genuine “crypto banking card,” incorporating asset holding, cross-border transfers and lifestyle perks like hotel discounts and cashback, rather than simply existing as a novelty crypto product.
WLFI received preliminary conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in August to establish a national trust bank responsible for issuing and redeeming USD1, a step the company says allows it to shift focus from liquidity and accessibility toward building out real distribution channels and use cases. Both companies frame South Korea as a test case whose results could shape how the stablecoin payment model is rolled out across other Asian medical tourism and lifestyle markets.
