Internet banking growth continued in 2019

Korea’s internet banking services continued to grow in last year, with the number of users and daily transactions climbing to record highs, data from the central bank showed Wednesday.

The number of internet and mobile banking users came to about 159.2 million as of the end of 2019, up 8.6 percent from a year before, according to the data from the Bank of Korea.

The figure is the simple sum of all registered users at 18 internet and mobile banking service providers in the country, meaning that the same person may have been counted multiple times, according to the central bank.

Such an increase was largely attributed to a sharp rise in the number of mobile banking users, which jumped 15.5 percent to over 120 million over the cited period.

The daily use of online banking services also grew at a fast clip with the average number of daily transactions spiking 19 percent on year to 12.3 million.

The daily average of the amount moved via internet and mobile banking services came to 48.8 trillion won ($40 billion), up 2.7 percent from a year earlier.

Yonhap