South Korea Expands its Mobile Payments Use 53 percent in Second Quarter

While we all knew that mobile payments were big in certain countries, it’s always something of a surprise to see just how big this field is getting in these places.

South Korea is proving a major front for mobile payments, as use was up 53 percent in the second quarter.

The Bank of Korea offered up the word, which not only featured the 53 percent gain, but also some other gains over previous numbers; mobile payments nearly doubled against those numbers seen in the first quarter, and reached a combined total of nearly $18 million US per day, reports noted.

The average number of mobile payments made per day reached 810,000, an increase of 83 percent over the previous quarter.

These numbers sound huge, but it helps to realize that many hands are making light work of this market. South Korea features 28.17 million preregistered cards on smartphones, along with 11 separate mobile payments services to choose from, ranging from KakaoPay to NaverPay to the global titan Samsung Pay.

It’s something of a surprise that 11 payment systems are co-existing peacefully in a population of 28 million, but it seems to be the case. Of course, even if the market was divided equally, we’d still be talking somewhere around 2.6 million people per service, and that’s no small market.

In fact, such a market could theoretically handle a couple more payment services, though admittedly, much of the market is probably sufficiently well-entrenched to make entrance difficult without a significant competitive advantage to it.

Still, it’d be worth trying; a market this big and this clearly devoted to the principle could be a fairly rich pot.

In the end, it’s all about pushing for the biggest share of market. With so many interested users already in play and spending on the rise, taking a run at the South Korean market might be a worthwhile idea. Still, they could be pushing critical mass out there too, so anyone planning to risk that market had better consider a hedge.