[1mm Financial Talk] BankSalad, the Highly Anticipated 'Real' Unicorn, When Exactly?

Corporate Value Reaches 600 Billion Won but Growth Slows Slightly Compared to Expectations

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] BankSalad, once considered a leading candidate for the next unicorn (a private startup valued at over 1 trillion KRW) in the fintech startup sector, has struggled to shed its "pre-unicorn" label. As its growth has somewhat stalled, the gap with Toss, which is eyeing a corporate valuation exceeding 20 trillion KRW, is widening.

According to industry sources on the 19th, BankSalad secured an investment of approximately 30 billion KRW last month from SKS MyData, a private equity firm under SK Securities' private fund management company SKS Private Equity. This follows Series D investments last July from KT (25 billion KRW), Kia (10 billion KRW), and SKS MyData (30 billion KRW). The valuation set during this investment was reported to be around 600 billion KRW.

Since officially launching its service in 2017, BankSalad has grown significantly and was regarded as the most promising fintech startup. Starting as a household ledger application, it expanded into asset management services, providing a consolidated view of assets scattered across various financial institutions, while analyzing consumption and spending to recommend suitable investment products, credit cards, and loans. It is credited with pioneering the model for the MyData (personal credit information management) services recently introduced by banks.

However, relying solely on a revenue model based on "curation" fees (commissions from financial product brokerage) without advertising has its limitations. Although cumulative downloads have surpassed 10 million, monthly active users (MAU) have somewhat plateaued, and it is noted that traffic rarely increases without cash incentives. Turning a profit remains challenging. BankSalad recorded an operating loss of 42 billion KRW last year, nearly 15 billion KRW more than the previous year's loss of 27.4 billion KRW.

This is also the reason for the widening gap with Toss. Toss has explosively grown its corporate value by expanding into a comprehensive financial platform including securities, internet-only banking, and payment gateway (PG) services. Starting in February 2015 with a commission-free simple remittance service, Toss became a unicorn by the end of 2018, just four years later. Its corporate valuation, which was only 130 billion KRW in March 2017, increased more than tenfold in just one year and nine months. Since then, it has entered securities and internet-only banking sectors, recently securing further investments, with its valuation now aiming to exceed 20 trillion KRW. Although BankSalad's valuation has also grown tenfold over about four years since its Series B funding of 60 billion KRW in October 2018, the fundamental scale difference with Toss remains significant.

Starting this year, BankSalad plans to transform into a specialized MyData company and make a full-fledged leap forward. With the amount of funds linked by customers exceeding 400 trillion KRW, it intends to expand its business through in-depth data analysis. At the end of last month, it announced that it would waive all fees for its remittance service indefinitely. Through this, it aims to actively promote open banking and integrate it with MyData to advance its asset management services.

Organizational restructuring is also underway. In November last year, Kim Moon-kyu, a KAIST graduate with experience as a software engineer at major U.S. tech companies such as Google and Amazon, was newly appointed as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Earlier this year, the vacant Chief Financial Officer (CFO) position was filled through an internal promotion. To strengthen corporate branding, Hong Sung-joon, formerly of Google, was recruited as Chief Design Officer (CDO) on the 15th. An industry insider commented, "With the MyData business starting this year, many banks and fintech companies will launch services similar to BankSalad's existing offerings. How BankSalad responds to this competition will determine whether it can rise from a 'pre-unicorn' to a true unicorn."