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By Park Jae-hyuk
Hyundai Card's analysis of payment data from 15 major franchises providing "untact" services showed Monday that their sales jumped fivefold to 35.9 billion won ($30.3 million) in May 2019 from 6.7 billion won in January 2017.
Untact is a portmanteau of "undo" and "contact."
The term refers to services that allow consumers to minimize contact with other people. Unmanned convenience stores and non-face-to-face purchases are examples of untact services.
As a growing number of consumers in their 20s and 30s tend to refuse unnecessary interpersonal relationships and prefer using digital devices, many companies have made efforts recently to eliminate the human factor.
According to the card issuer, however, the most significant outcome of its latest analysis was the rapid growth in demand for untact services among consumers in their 40s.
Their amount of payment for untact services has increased by 500 percent over the past two years. That figure far surpasses those of consumers in their 20s and 30s, which came in at 235 percent and 304 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, a survey by Ipsos, a global market research firm, showed 909 among 1,000 respondents have used untact services.
In the survey, 71.8 percent of the respondents answered they were satisfied with untact financial services. Although the largest number of respondents said they have experienced untact services in the category of delivery, the satisfaction level was highest in the category of financial services.
Against this backdrop, Hyundai Card and Hyundai Capital, both of which are Hyundai Motor Group subsidiaries, have come up with untact services to meet the needs of their customers.
In July 2017, Hyundai Capital launched its digital vehicle finance application system which enables consumers to apply for car financing products via mobile device and finish the whole process within 24 hours.
According to the credit finance company, the number of uses of the system rose to 30,737 in May 2019 from 4,706 in July 2017.
Hyundai Card came up with its artificial intelligence-based automated response system and Watson-based chatbot named Buddy. It also launched the real-time credit card issuance service, which allows customers to apply for their credit cards via mobile app.
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