Shinhan Card Co., part of Korea’s leading Shinhan Financial Group, and Visa Korea, the Korean branch of global credit card giant Visa Inc., forged alliance to promote the fintech industry and startups in Korea.

Shinhan Card announced Wednesday that it agreed on Tuesday to jointly operate a startup incubating program named ‘I’m Ventures with Visa’ with Visa Korea.

The program is part of Shinhan Financial Group’s efforts to create an ecosystem for innovative growth. The group announced early this month that it will expand its direct investment pool to 25 billion won ($22 million) over the next five years and invest total 2.1 trillion won worth sources into 6,000 promising firms. It has been funding 112 startups by spending 8.3 billion won through the industry’s first fintech and startup promoting program Shinhan Futures Lab.

Shinhan Card and Visa Korea will receive applications from startups engaging in payment and money transfer, security and authentication, artificial intelligence (AI), big data and new financial services by mid-May to pick firms to provide various supporting programs such as mentoring or equity investment. They will also hold a contest in October this year to select a few startups to offer helps in every business process ranging from materializing business ideas to commercializing products under Visa Co-Creation project.

Since 2016, Shinhan Card has been working hard to find new businesses through a venture support system under which it launched a wedding-related financial service All That Wedding. The company has been conducting a startup funding program dubbed I’m Ventures since last year to extend cooperation with newly-establish firms with great potential.

Visa holds Visa Everywhere Initiative every year, a global innovation program that presents real-life business challenges for fintech startups to solve. It held the event for the first time in Korea in February.

By Kim Gang-rae and Choi Mira

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