[Asia Economy Reporter Song Seung-seop] Last year, the transaction amount of 'Kakao Gift' was found to have increased by more than 40% compared to the previous year.
On the 17th, according to the online gift transaction status submitted by the Fair Trade Commission to Song Jae-ho, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, Kakao's transaction amount last year reached 2.5342 trillion KRW.
As face-to-face meetings decreased due to COVID-19, the amount increased by 40.5% from 1.8039 trillion KRW the previous year. This figure has been increasing every year from 2016 (638.5 billion KRW) to 2017 (827.1 billion KRW) and 2018 (1.1929 trillion KRW).
The amount refunded due to expiration of validity or at the request of buyers or recipients was 254.1 billion KRW last year, accounting for about 10% of the transaction amount.
The transaction amounts of gift services on 11st (411 billion KRW), Coupang (37 billion KRW), SSG.com (4.2 billion KRW), and Naver (2.7 billion KRW) also increased significantly, marking the largest scale in the past five years.
Assemblyman Song said, “As open markets and platforms have successively launched gift services, complaints and damage relief applications due to expiration of validity periods are also rapidly increasing,” adding, “Improvements are needed in the validity period and refund regulations for new types of online gift certificates.”
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