Mobile payment use on the rise

It’s not unusual nowadays to see a customer whip out a smartphone instead of a wallet to pay for coffee at a cafe or hop on a bus.

A study by the Bank of Korea released Tuesday showed that the use of such mobile payment apps has risen sharply in the second quarter of this year, especially as leading tech companies like Kakao, Naver and even Samsung Electronics have been aggressively expanding their services faster than financial companies are.

The study examined transactions between April and June and found that 28.2 million mobile payment accounts were issued in that period, 24.6 percent more than in the first quarter of this year. More than 70 percent of those accounts, about 21 million, were issued by tech companies, while the others were issued by banks with their own payment apps.

Average daily spending amounted to 20.7 billion won ($18.46 million), a 53.3 percent increase from the first quarter. More impressive is how frequently mobile payment apps were accessed. In the second quarter, daily average use was over 805,000, an 82.9 percent surge from the first quarter’s 440,000.

However, when compared to the daily average of 2 trillion won being spent through conventional plastic cards, the figure for mobile payments is low as it only accounts for 1 percent of all transactions.

Still, these payment options have been gaining popularity among young tech-savvy consumers since they do not require the kind of odious security authentication tools needed in online shopping via computer.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]