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| The Toss Siren service used to prevent online frauds / Courtesy of Viva Republica |
TheCheat cries foul over Viva Republica's decision
By Park Jae-hyuk
Viva Republica, the operator of mobile money transfer app Toss, has come under fire on social media for its latest partnership with the National Police Agency formed to prevent online fraud.
Kim Hwa-rang, the CEO of TheCheat, an online platform created in 2006 to share information about online fraud, criticized the partnership on Facebook, late Wednesday, after the announcement by Viva Republica earlier that day.
Even before the Toss operator joined hands with the police, TheCheat had been providing Viva Republica with the online fraud data it collected. In October, Viva Republica announced it had detected more than 100,000 suspicious transactions during a two-month test operation of its Siren service in collaboration with TheCheat.
However, the company decided to use police data in addition to TheCheat data for its Siren service, despite its partner's complaints.
"The National Police Agency Cyber Bureau had promised not to infringe on our business model, but it broke the promise again," Kim wrote on Facebook. "It has been 15 years since I started our service in the public interest. I should have been more cold-hearted, but I couldn't do it."
Kim has claimed over the past few years that the police bureau stole his company's idea. During a forum at the National Assembly in 2018, he said it seemed to have developed a service similar to his company's in 2010, using the online fraud data it received from TheCheat.
A Viva Republica spokesman said the company will continue to collaborate with TheCheat and pay for the company's data, regardless of its recent partnership with the police.
"Our partnership with the police was to prevent fraud more effectively by utilizing more data," he said.
However, it is still possible for TheCheat to suffer damage from Viva Republica working with the police.
TheCheat suffered damage when Naver signed a memorandum of understanding with the police in 2015, despite the giant portal's previous agreement for shared growth with the fintech firm. According to Kim, the volume of reports uploaded on his company's website dropped 18 percent after Naver began to show the police service on its search engine.
After the CEO wrote complaints on social media, some internet users expressed their disappointment in Viva Republica, not just the police, given that the company was once a small fintech startup like TheCheat. The Korea Times asked Kim for comment on this issue, but he did not respond.
