Subscription Management App Developer CEO Kim Joon-tae
Sends Notifications Aligned with Payment Dates
Cancellation Possible with a Single Touch
Manages Over 9 Trillion KRW Within One Year of Launch
[Asia Economy Reporter Park So-yeon] There is a platform company in its second year of launch that major platform operators like Kakao, Naver, and Toss are eager to acquire. It is the subscription management platform ‘Whatssub’.
Whatssub is a domestic subscription economy manager that has grown to a scale of 40 trillion KRW. It was conceived based on the need for easy subscription, payment, and cancellation in this era. Everyone has probably experienced how subscriptions are easy to start but difficult to cancel. First, people often forget what they have subscribed to, and when trying to cancel, it feels like the providers hide the cancellation methods tightly. Whatssub automatically finds the subscription services in use?such as Netflix, Watcha, Coupang, YouTube, rentals, memberships, and financial products?through a scraping method and notifies users before payment is processed. If there is a subscription service the user wants to cancel, Whatssub helps cancel it with just one touch. It sends alerts aligned with payment dates and includes detailed features like skipping a subscription for one month. Since users can manage all their accumulating subscriptions from subscribing to canceling with just one app, word of mouth has spread. Banks, card companies, and platform businesses also want to implement such services in line with the expansion of the subscription economy, but it is not easy to match Whatssub’s know-how.
Kim Joon-tae, CEO of Whatssub, said, "It has been one year since Whatssub’s launch, and the cumulative managed amount is about 9 trillion KRW," adding, "About 89% of actual members find us because they need the service, through word of mouth rather than advertisements." Whatssub can automatically detect a total of 1,365 subscription services, including 829 subscription services and 536 fixed living expenses. Among these, 1,213 services offer easy cancellation features. As of the end of October, the cumulative managed amount is 8.9 trillion KRW, with 140,000 cumulative downloads. The monthly active users (MAU) number 45,669.
The main customer age group is 20 to 40 years old. CEO Kim said, "As the economic life period lengthens, fixed expenses continue to accumulate," and added, "The goal of the service was to enable customers to see all regularly billed expenses at a glance and gain consumption insight and make consumption decisions." He also said, "The first feature we introduced was the subscription part, and we are expanding to rentals, memberships, financial products, and other regularly billed services."
Whatssub’s staff consists of 16 people, including developers. The reason why card companies, commercial banks, and large platform companies covet Whatssub’s technology is its exceptional data analysis capability. CEO Kim said, "The person in charge of overall development has held patents since high school and has outstanding analytical skills," hinting, "Other services try to imitate our technology but cannot match certain aspects."
CEO Kim said, "I really want to do fintech," and added, "I hope it can also be used for public interest purposes, such as finding cases where seniors unknowingly make small payments for years." Whatssub is also attempting to provide public services through the Financial Services Commission and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.
The domestic subscription economy market size is analyzed to have grown from 25.9 trillion KRW in 2016 to 40 trillion KRW last year. This is why the need for services managing this market is increasing. In the United States, which accounts for 51% of the global subscription market, the representative subscription management service ‘Clarity Money’ was acquired by Goldman Sachs. The market capitalization of Zuora, a subscription service sales management company, is about 3.4 trillion KRW.
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