Evolution of banking services in South Korea

Hello everyone,

With rapid technological advancements, banking services are digitizing at lightning speed. Expats are thus propelled into a new era of options and payment methods, disrupting the traditional banking services of local establishments in South Korea. An evolution that presents a range of opportunities and challenges on a local scale.

Share your experiences regarding the evolution of bankings services in South Korea:

To what extent are the latest banking technologies being adopted and utilized in South Korea? (contactless payments, phone-based payment systems, QR codes, etc.)
What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Are new payment methods emerging in South Korea? Which ones, and what does it change in your daily life?

What are the advantages of using local bank services versus an international online banking service as an expat?

Are there specific features in banking apps that you find particularly helpful as an expat in South Korea?

By sharing your experiences and insights, you contribute to a broader understanding of the evolving banking landscape for expats in South Korea.

Thank you for your contribution.

Cheryl
Expat.com Team

I use Hana Bank because I heard from many foreigners that it was the one they had the best experiences with, and also when I then visited Hana Bank's forums and searched for more information on them, they did have a lot more benefits they were offering to foreigners than some of the other banks. However luckily there are at least 4 or 5 banks in Korea which have high reviews with foreigners and so there are plenty of options, and then of course the international banks are here such as Citibank and so on. I would sit down sometime and write a full length article on the subject but thankfully there are many articles on the topic of foreigners banking in Korea, which are really surprisingly detailed, comprehensive, and well done. And Korea keeps making more and more improvements, adding benefits, features, especially revolving around advances in technology, security, and banking itself. The biggest improvement was when Paypal stirred the industry to create its own Paypal similar online banking services, and now has Kakaopay, LGpay, Samsungpay, etc, and more accessability in Korea for using Applepay, Amazonpay, etc (of course the names of those services might be slightly different and I used "-pay" to simply refer to the companies and that they have such a feature). Also for the realm of investing, and business capital, etc, all of it is getting quite exciting. Thank you for bringing up this topic! Keep 'em coming! Hopefully some more commentators, besides me, with similar or more experiences will chime in and share. This is an amazing community, one of my favorite places to catch up on what's going on in the world, people are truly amazing! 1f60d.svg