More and more businesses in Korea are becoming digital and shifting to online platforms. Therefore, there has been a rise in innovative Korean fintech payments startups offering effective digital solutions and efficient tools to help the fintech industry in Korea. They provide seamless and secure payment experiences for Koreans, leading South Korea to be one of the innovators in the industry. Regarding payments, South Korea is the top testbed for fintech startups. Electronic payments dominate Korea’s financial systems, and the global pandemic has increased the demand for more digital services. Here are some of the top Fintech Startups in Korea changing the way Koreans pay.
Viva Republica is the leading South Korean fintech startup. They are the operator of mobile financial super app Toss, a Korean startup Unicorn. Toss has over 20 million users in Korea, and Viva Republica has been aggressively looking to expand its operations beyond the financial sector. They already cover P2P payments, money transfers, cards, and many more financial services. They are valued at over $7 billion and will look to expand its footprint in Asia until its potential IPO in 2025.
Viva Republica launched Toss Securities, which makes stock trading accessible to new investors. It has over 3.5 million users to date.
Vivia Republica launched Toss Bank, which focuses on lending in addition to offering savings accounts with competitive interest rates. Through Toss Bank, the startup can now focus on loans, unsecured loans, and mortgages. They will use their risk-scoring model to leverage data from its millions of users. In addition, Toss Bank offers information from South Korea’s main credit rating agencies with its own data about user transactions.
CHAI offers its own digital wallet and debit card called CHAI card. It has over 2.5 million users, offering merchants a lower transaction fee than other cards. There are also new cashback offers and other rewards based on how often they pay with their cards or digital wallet.
“We’ve digitized the plastic card experience, and this is the first step towards creating a robust online rewards platform,” said the CEO of CHAI, Daniel Shin.
CHAI has raised over $60 million through their Series B round led by Hanhwa Investment & Securities and SoftBank Ventures just to name a few. Their total investments to date stand at $75 million.
WireBarley has certified remittance licenses in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Hong Kong, and Korea. This means WireBarley is providing remittance services for customers in many countries. Therefore they have a competitive cost structure from the sophisticated financial skills of an “aggregator” model.
WireBarley has a treasury center in Hong Kong for optimizing the fund flow among countries. Therefore they have competitiveness in fund flow, liquidity management, and forex hedging. They have more than 400,000 app downloads and a total transaction amount of $400 million. Recently they entered the US market for the Koreans and other Asians living there who want to send money back to their home countries. Therefore, this means their compliance standards are satisfactory to US regulatory authorities, which are the most strict in the world. In the future, they have plans to expand into Canada and Singapore. In addition, they plan to enter into B2B markets and become the leading cross-border Fintech platform.
“One of our core design principles is terrific money service capabilities that are easy to use,” said John Joongwon Yoo, the CEO at WireBarley.
They were able to raise $8.5 million for their Series B funding round, bringing their total investment to $14.5 million.
Payhere is the creator of a mobile point-of-sale system maker that provides a cloud-based mobile POS service that can be downloaded to smartphones and tablets. Therefore there is no need for physical equipment for merchants to take orders and offer payments. There are no monthly fees, transaction fees, or penalty charges. The startup was able to raise over $10 million to date from Softbank Ventures Asia and Hashed, just to name a few.
FuzeW can support more than 30 cryptocurrencies and can generate more than 30 address accounts per device. In addition, it also has a digital signature functionality through Bluetooth.
Korean Fintech startup Sentbe makes it easy to send money overseas. This is a huge problem for many Koreans that want to send money abroad. Sentbe is a remittance company that offers quick delivery times (24 hr average), low fees (95% cheaper than banks), and easy-to-use functions. Currently, Sentbe remits to 14 countries, including the US and China. They have over 10,000 monthly active users and 30,000 remittances from Korea every month. Customers have collectively saved $10.5M USD (12B KRW) in transfer commission fees. Sentbe takes up to 2% of the remitted amount on average.
Foreigners working and living in Korea will get the most benefit out of Sentbe. Most of their users are Filipinos living in Korea. Therefore, 40% of their remittance goes to the Philippines.
They use a pooling method which means they send a large amount of money overseas to save on currency exchange and processing fees. So far, they have been able to raise $3.5 million in funding. Moreover, in 2023 they look to focus on helping Korean startups, and enterprises easily accept payments from companies abroad at low costs.
Sentbe became the first MoneyGram virtual agent in South Korea. They will work together to improve financial inclusion in South Korea further.
“We are now in an even better position to meet the demand for tech-savvy solutions within this space and look forward to the change this will bring to the diverse community we serve,” said Alex Choi, CEO of Sentbe.
Due to high costs, current network technologies like Wi-Fi, NFC, and Bluetooth have limitations in connecting the devices. Using ultrasonic technology will make the connections easier and more secure. Furthermore, Mobidoo’s solution has already been deployed in Lotte Group’s mobile payment solution L.Pay. It will be used at the retail giant’s department and supermarket stores across the nation. In addition, they are making more than 150,000 transactions per month. In 2023 they will focus on overseas markets such as Finland and Indonesia.
Moin users can remit up to $30,000 per year and $3,000 per transfer. The volume of money remitted through Moin’s platform has increased by about 140 percent each quarter. Furthermore, their focus for 2022 will be cryptocurrencies devoted to remittances (Ripple or Stellar). In addition, they will look to partner with countries in Southeast Asia.
InstaPay is a mobile payment solution for home shopping channels and O2O commerce. It allows users to buy instantly by scanning a QR code on the TV screen. Therefore, they don’t have to go through the long payment process over the phone or online. InstaPay increases sales for home shopping companies by making it easier to pay when watching home shopping programs.
Allink is the developer of an NFC tag solution that allows for offline payments. Their solution is a virtual reader and scanner solution designed to support mobile services to connect freely with terminals. Therefore, businesses can offer payments and other services such as gift cards, discounts, rewards, and redemptions through the same device without needing additional devices or scanners. Data is transferred to terminals such as KIOSKs and POS devices. Best of all, it does not require integration with each terminal. Users only need to tap on the tag to process transactions.
Deep Tech is quickly becoming a key focus in the global investment landscape, and it…
As machine learning and AI technology continue to advance, businesses all around the world require…
By now, many of us have already been exposed to the world of augmented reality.…
As the world struggles with food security and nutrition challenges, there is growing acknowledgment that…
The future is AI Technology. Top entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been…
Undoubtedly, agriculture is one of the most fundamental industries on our planet. It provides food,…