Breaking Down Barriers: Can Foreigners in Korea Find a Payment Service That Speaks Their Language
BC Card: Providing Payment Services to Foreigners in Korea
BC Card, a payment processing specialist, is providing payment services to foreigners residing in Korea in cooperation with a fintech company specializing in overseas remittances.
The number of foreigners residing in Korea has exceeded 5% of the total population, with 2,616,007 foreigners living in the country as of July. This has led to an increased demand for payment services targeting foreigners.
BC Card’s Payment Services
BC Card has the largest number of merchants in the industry, with 3.45 million as of the first half of this year. It provides stable payment processing services, processing card transactions worth about 230 trillion won annually for about 40 clients.
BC Card is providing card issuance and payment processing services based on its own prepaid electronic payment method to fintech clients specializing in overseas remittances. It also supports a simple payment service based on QR codes in accordance with the Electronic Media Access (EMV) standard.
Partnerships with Fintech Companies
Representative domestic fintech companies for overseas remittances, such as Hanpass, G-Money Trans, Global Money Express, Road System, and Finshot, are joining hands with BC Card to introduce card products and QR payment services tailored to their customers.
Benefits for Foreigners
Hanpass provides a 5% cashback benefit in 8 industries that are directly related to daily life, such as shopping, cultural performances, and travel, through the ’GO Card’.
G-Money Trans provides a ‘G-Money Card’ product consisting of 3 grades: Premier, Dream, and Welcome. Its characteristic is that it provides payment rewards as well as various insurance and living expenses support services in case foreign customers are in an emergency due to various accidents while residing in Korea.
Global Money Express launched three types of ‘GME Cards’ (△Pay △Uniq △Premium) last December for foreign customers residing in Korea. All three types provide a basic 0.3% cashback benefit at domestic merchants without any previous month’s performance conditions.
Road System launched the prepaid recharge card ‘Trip.PASS Card’, which can be used in the ‘Trip.PASS’ app, a tourism and finance platform for foreign tourists, together with BC Card in March. Foreigners who purchase Trip.PASS Card can recharge the prepaid amount without any additional fees using the card issued in their home country, and they can also receive a 1% payback benefit on the recharge amount.
Finshot has been providing the ‘Coinshot Card’, a prepaid card linked to the wallet of its overseas remittance service ‘Coinshot’ together with BC Card since 2022.
BC Card plans to continue to support convenient payment services for foreigners residing in Korea through partnerships with fintech clients as the only payment processing company in Korea.