KT, BC Card launches mobile wallet service
KT Marketing Division Senior Vice President Nam Kyu-taek, left, with BC Card CEO Seo Joon-hee during the launch event for mobile wallet service “CLiP” at the KT office near Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of KT
By Yoon Sung-won
KT, the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier, and its credit card affiliate, BC Card, rolled out a new mobile wallet service Tuesday.
“CLiP” is designed automatically to provide customers with information on credit card discount benefits and coupons they can use when they enter an affiliated store. The two companies said they want to attract 10 million users to the new (O2O) platform service this year.
With the service, KT has joined the competition in the financial technology and online-to-offline (O2O) sector here where service providers such as SK Planet with “Syrup” are already intensifying their drive to dominate in the platform business.
“With the CLiP service, we expect that customers will be able to get integrated information to make more rational decisions to buy something,” said BC Card CEO Seo Joon-hee during a press conference at the KT office in central Seoul, Tuesday.
KT Marketing Division Senior Vice President Nam Kyu-taek said existing mobile wallet services have focused only on providing coupons and managing membership points, making it inconvenient for users manually to use the right membership card or coupon at a certain store.
Unlike others, CLiP automatically shows which card or coupon provides the largest discount or mileage benefit when users step into an affiliated store. The service also searches and displays discount benefits provided by some 2,500 credit or debit cards available in Korea. Once users register the information of their credit, debit or membership card to the application, CLiP suggests which card to use or which store to visit to get the most discount.
KT said the mobile wallet service has more than five times wider coverage for the automatic location recognition function because it uses KT’s 180,000 Wi-Fi access points nationwide, adding to the global positioning system (GPS) and wireless local area network Beacon.
The service is available at about 110,000 affiliated stores nationwide, including Paris Baguette, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbin’s, Starbucks, Angel-in-us, Caffe Pascucci, A Twosome Place, Caffe Bene, CGV and convenience store chains GS25, Seven Eleven and CU, KT said.
KT and BC Card also said the service will provide discount coupons issued by smaller affiliated stores such as fried chicken restaurants and coffee shops to Chinese customers under cooperation with China’s largest card company, China Union Pay.
As of Tuesday, CLiP is available at the Google Play application store and will be launched at the App Store once Apple completes the approval process, a KT spokesman said.
KT and BC Card said they will add a mobile payment function to CLiP in October.
BC Card said users can register their credit card data to the application through a secure cloud-based technology called Host Card Education and directly pay after checking all discount information using the CLiP service.
“We seek to build an O2O ecosystem through this marketing platform by adding a mobile payment function to the new service,” Seo said. “We expect many other financial technology service operators will join in our integrated commerce platform.”