![As more and more stores are introducing simple payment services instead of cash, customers are paying for goods using QR codes and barcodes at a convenience store in downtown Seoul. [한주형 기자]](https://i0.wp.com/file.mk.co.kr/meet/neds/2020/12/image_readtop_2020_1321104_16088872944484874.jpg?w=560&ssl=1)
Amid a growing number of stores that introduce simple payment services instead of cash, customers are paying for goods using QR codes and barcodes at a convenience store in downtown Seoul. [한주형 기자]‘A world where all payments are possible with Pay except for the lotto.’
The reporter has lived with only’Pay’ for a week without a wallet. As a result, all transactions necessary for life were possible with Pay, except when buying a lottery ticket. We also had enough conditions for a cashless society. When I made the habit of taking my smartphone out of my pocket and not my wallet at the time of payment, there was no inconvenience. It is difficult to imagine the sight of paying bills and receiving change back when riding a bus in the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise, taking out physical cards or cash out of your wallet and paying for it will feel like an old past. Ironically, many people were still sticking to cash only for lottery tickets that were purchased for an instant. This is because the current Lottery Fund Act stipulates that lottery tickets should not be sold by credit card payment. ‘What kind of era is this now?’ I thought it was an old regulation.
In the morning, I started paying the subway fare with Samsung Pay. General restaurants always had a QR code for Zero Pay payment. Sometimes the communication connection was not smooth, so it took some time to pay, but the store clerk said, “Please do it slowly and only show the payment details.” However, pay payments on street vendors were somewhat difficult. After ordering a bindae-teok at a street vendor in Jongno Gwangjang Market in Seoul, the owner of the owner’s pouch expressed a discomfort when requesting a payment for’Pay’.
However, if she felt the need to adjust to the new environment, she went to the nearby store, paid for it, and returned to get food. Another nearby stall owner asked for an account transfer, saying, “I haven’t tried paying for it before, so I don’t know how to do it.” Even if I did Dutch Pay after eating with several people, using the Pay service was easy. If you use the Kakao Pay’Settlement’ service, you can easily settle the total amount by dividing it by the number of people and sending it.
The `cashless` society was introduced into our society much faster than we thought. According to the Bank of Korea, after the spread of Corona 19, non-face-to-face payments using mobile devices have increased rapidly. The scale of non-face-to-face payments from January to September this year was 833.3 billion won, a 17% increase from the same period last year. This is in contrast to the 3.7% decrease in the size of face-to-face payments using physical cards. While payments using mobile devices, etc., generate an average of KRW 1 trillion per day, it was found that 39% of mobile payments account for simple payment by entering card information in advance into smartphones or applications such as Kakao Pay and Samsung Pay.
A social environment that does not use cash is also gradually being created. Starbucks Coffee Korea operates about 60% of stores nationwide as’cashless stores’. It is a store that actively encourages customers to use payment methods other than cash when purchasing products.
The Bank of Korea has also been implementing the’Change Savings Service’ project since 2017 to reduce the cost of issuing and distributing cash. It is a system that receives change money into a prepaid card or account after calculating it in cash at a convenience store.
Corona 19 is completely changing people’s payment behavior. According to the results of a survey of 8,000 people around the world by French research company Cap Gemini, 41% of respondents used non-face-to-face payment such as QR code payment for the first time since the outbreak of Corona 19. The company predicts that the digital wallet and QR code payment market will grow explosively. It is predicted that the number of e-wallet users required for pay payments, etc. will increase by nearly 50% in 5 years to reach 4 billion.
‘Pay payment’, which does not use cash or card, is the most active in China. According to the `Mobile Simple Payment Factbook` published by the National Assembly Library last month, China is the world’s No. 1 mobile payment market and 86% of the people use mobile payment services.
In the mobile simple payment market, Alibaba Alipay and Tencent WeChat Pay occupy the first or second place in the global market. After the spread of Corona 19, Alipay also introduced a system that checks the path of movement through the payment details for each subscriber, and checks the health status of subscribers based on whether they visit the virus-infected area.
India is an emerging powerhouse in the digital payment market. According to KOTRA, as of 2018, India had a fintech adoption rate (the ratio of fintech service users among the total population) at 57.9%, ranking second in the world after China (83.5%).
The volume of digital transactions in India is expected to reach $26.244 trillion in 2020, and is expected to increase by 21% annually over the next five years. It was found that more than 75% of Indian consumers increased their use of digital payments after the spread of Corona 19. KOTRA predicted that India will become a hub for the digital payment market due to its population and various types of digital payments.
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