Korean credit card issuers are rushing to go digital via differentiated features amid surge in e-commerce to brace up for the inevitability of the plastic going extinct one day.

BC Card launched a new pay app that can be used at a cashier-less convenience store in its headquarters in Seoul, similar to Amazon’s Go stores, set up in cooperation with convenient store chain GS25 and payment platform operator Smartro.

The store has no checkout counter for payment. Customers can enter the store by scanning a QR Code on BC Card’s Paybook app at the speed gate. Artificial intelligence-backed smart cameras analyze their behavior, and 300 weight sensors on the shelves detect which items are picked by the shoppers to reflect the change to the owner’s app for inventory management.

All items are automatically paid at the exit. And mobile receipts are immediately issued.

Shinhan Card installed its new facial recognition payment solution at a café in its headquarters building. The Face Pay does not require any plastics or smartphones for payment if users have already registered their cards and faces to the monitor of its recognition machine in advance. Once the information is registered, users do not have to renew it for the next 10 years as the system can recognize the facial aging, according to the company.

Shinhan Card is planning to start testing out the system also at Hanyang University within the month.

Lotte Card has introduced biometric payment system Hand Pay, enabling shoppers to pay for convenience store items with palm-vein reading. It takes only one second to read one’s palm-vein and finish payment. The system is more sanitary than the fingerprint recognition as it doesn’t require actual physical contact of users’ hand to the machine, according to the company.

Registration is available at a recognition machine of each store.

KB Kookmin Card is also establishing its own mobile payment platform KB Pay for services encompassing all its financial units for the first time in the industry.

Market experts say card issuers are active in development of new payment options on expectations that plastics will soon disappear in line with the rise of non-contact payment solutions. According to the Financial Supervisory Service, 2.3 billion transactions were made via mobile payment solutions as of the end of 2018, valued at 80.15 trillion won ($67.9 billion), nearly tripling from 26.88 trillion won in 2016.

By Lee Sae-ha, Han Sang-heon and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]