South Korea

Cards dominate in-person spending. In a Bank of Korea survey of 3,500 adults, credit cards accounted for 46.2% of payment transactions in 2024, debit cards 16.4%, cash 15.9%, mobile card payments 12.9% and account transfers 3.7%. Cash has fallen from 26.4% of payments in 2019 but remains important for older people: those aged 60 and over used it for 30.2% of their payments. Phone-maker wallets such as Samsung Pay, which works on standard card terminals, and Apple Pay accounted for 23.7% of simple payment value in 2025, alongside QR and barcode payments in Naver Pay, Kakao Pay and Toss. Registered card merchants may not refuse credit cards.

Korea’s national statistics agency reported online shopping transactions of KRW 272.3 trillion in 2025, up 4.9% on 2024, of which KRW 211.1 trillion, about 77.5%, was made on mobile devices; food delivery and dining services grew faster than the market, while offline retail sales rose only 0.4%. Leading platforms include Coupang, Naver Shopping, 11st and Gmarket, alongside cross-border marketplaces such as AliExpress and Temu. Merchants selling to Korean shoppers should expect to offer a Korean-language checkout, support for local cards with instalments and the main simple payment wallets. Because card merchants may not pass fees on to cardholders, card costs have to be built into prices rather than added as surcharges.

Payments are regulated by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and supervised by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS); the Bank of Korea oversees payment and settlement systems. Payment gateways (PGs), prepaid issuers and other electronic financial businesses must register with the FSC under the Electronic Financial Transactions Act. An amendment promulgated in December 2025 requires PGs to have settlement funds managed by third parties such as banks through deposits, trusts or payment guarantee insurance, covering 60% of funds from December 2026 and 100% from December 2028. Under the Specialized Credit Finance Business Act, credit card merchants may not refuse card payments, treat cardholders unfavourably or shift merchant fees to cardholders.

Account and card ownership are very high. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 found that 96.9% of South Korean adults had an account in 2024 and 79.6% owned a debit card; its 2021 round put credit card ownership at 68% and found that 78% of adults had bought something online using a phone or the internet. Cash use is concentrated among older people: in the Bank of Korea’s 2024 survey, adults aged 60 and over used cash for 30.2% of their payments, against 15.9% for all adults.