Naver to launch pay system for mobile shopping

By Bahk Eun-ji

Naver said it will launch Naver Pay, an electronic payment system, in the first half of the year as part of moves to strengthen its mobile shopping business.

Users will be able to pay for products they searched for on Naver with their IDs. The company said it will also use a new search algorithm to provide optimized results for shoppers.

“Users will be able to go through nonstop shopping process from product searching to payment on a mobile platform,” said Han Seong-sook, general director of services at Naver at a press conference, Tuesday.

Naver said the payment service is to reorganize its service platform from being a mere product search into optimized mobile shopping user experience.

It is a combination of Naver’s services Check Out, Mileage, and Naver Cash.

The Check Out service has over 15 million users and 40,000 online member shops. It is an online payment process, which allows subscribers to use their Naver accounts to buy listed products.

Naver basically offers a price comparison service and professional product reviews by its online shoppers, but the company said it will upgrade the shopping feature with Shopping Trend Graph.

Naver will use this to change search results in response to users’ keyword searches based on their shopping pattern, trends, sales information and product recommendations.

The company said the payment service will be based on strong security technology, because users can pay with their IDs and virtual credit card numbers.

Han said more than 30 percent of users searched shopping related keywords on Naver last year, so it will develop the search service further.

It will launch the reorganized service on the mobile version first, and gradually apply a PC version.