Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
Hana Bank offers mobile financial certificates in 16 languages
Hana Bank headquarters in central Seoul / Newsis
By Anna J. Park
Aiming to offer differentiated services for various foreign communities in Korea, Hana Bank has begun issuing mobile financial certificates in 16 languages through its overseas remittance-exclusive mobile app HanaEZ, the bank announced on Monday.
The bank said it is the first time for a domestic bank to provide support for 16 different languages for the issuance of financial certificates. The new service targets to enhance transactional convenience for foreign nationals living in Korea, while positioning itself as a leading bank in satisfying foreign communities' unique needs in their everyday lives.
According to the bank, the Hana Certification is a private financial certificate that earned acknowledgement from the Ministry of Science and ICT, boasting high levels of security and technology.
The certificate not only grants financial transactions by users, but also allows various non-face-to-face authentication tasks required at over 170 institutions, including the National Tax Service and the National Health Insurance Service.
Thanks to the multilingual support service, foreign nationals residing in Korea can easily get Hana Certification issued at the HanaEZ app without facing a language barrier.
Furthermore, Hana Bank said it is the first among domestic banks to allow foreign customers who have been using only their passport numbers for financial transactions to update their alien registration card numbers, once they obtain a registration card for stays exceeding 90 days, through the app without the need to visit an offline branch.
"Through the multilingual issuance support for Hana Certification and the online change service for foreigner identification numbers, we expect to increase foreign customers' benefits and financial convenience," an official from Hana Bank said.