The South Korean city of Incheon, located west of Seoul and known for its international airport and its sea port, announced a measure to recover debts for water invoices: a pilot will begin to confiscate cryptocurrencies of those who have great delays in their payments.
As reported by the local government, as of October 1 and until the end of November, a special debt collection period will be held.
In that period, debtors who do not respond to payment notices could see how their cryptocurrencies, tracked in exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb, are used to cover their invoices.
The authorities indicated that The measure will apply to debtors with delays exceeding 500,000 wones (about 350 dollars), who concentrate approximately 34% of the total owed, that is, around 813 million wones or about 570,000 dollars.
Such as reported A radial station of the city, from the administration of INCHEON they indicated that Citizens who face economic difficulties will receive facilitiessuch as the possibility of postponing payment or fractionation in fees.
They also stressed that Incheon is the first city in the country that implements a digital asset monitoring system for this type of charges.
Jang Byeong-Hyeon, head of the City Hydraulic Works Division, declared: “Water rates are an essential resource directly related to the lives of citizens, and we are the country’s first hydraulic works office in implementing a virtual asset seizure system.”
He added: “We will continue to develop various measures to guarantee the financial solidity of hydraulic works and optimize management.”
Gradually, authorities around the world begin to incorporate digital currencies In public management. While in Incheon they presume to resort to cryptoactives to recover service debts, in Latin America several locations already allow the payment of obligations in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
In Ciudad de Panama, for example, citizens can already pay taxes and services voluntarily with cryptoactive, as reported by cryptootics in April 2025.