Two Cases Including Tobang X Gwangju Bank Joint Loan Designated as Innovative Financial Services

Toss Bank and Gwangju Bank have joined forces to launch a 'joint loan service,' which has been newly designated as an innovative financial service by financial authorities.

On the 26th, the Financial Services Commission held a regular meeting and announced that the Toss Bank·Gwangju Bank joint loan service, Travel Wallet's foreign currency-denominated prepaid electronic payment instrument transfer service, and limit increase were newly designated as innovative financial services.

The joint loan service of Toss Bank and Gwangju Bank allows consumers to apply for a loan through the Toss Bank application, after which both banks conduct loan screenings for the consumer, jointly determine the loan limit and interest rate, and handle the loan at once within the Toss Bank app.

To facilitate this, the authorities allowed Toss Bank to manage loans for Gwangju Bank’s portion and granted an exception for Toss Bank to perform tasks such as loan solicitation, customer information verification, and loan screening result delivery on behalf of Gwangju Bank without a separate dual business report.

Additionally, both banks are permitted to outsource essential tasks such as loan screening and execution to the other bank during service operation. Toss Bank is allowed to notify delinquency and collect overdue payments for Gwangju Bank’s loans without a separate debt collection license, while Gwangju Bank is entrusted with these tasks by Toss Bank under the granted exception.

The Financial Services Commission explained, "The two banks can diversify sales channels during joint loan handling and complement and utilize each other's credit evaluation models to strengthen capabilities through more sophisticated loan screening, promoting healthy competition in the banking loan market. From the consumer perspective, loan handling costs will be reduced, and borrower risk will be dispersed, enabling consumers to receive lower interest rates."

Travel Wallet's foreign currency-denominated prepaid electronic payment instrument transfer service and limit increase allow Travel Wallet users who have registered a real-name deposit account to pay in Korean won, charge Travel Pay foreign currency points, and then remit (transfer) them to other users. The holding limit for foreign currency points has been increased from 2 million KRW to 3 million KRW.

To this end, the authorities granted regulatory exceptions to allow the transfer of foreign currency points to other members and temporarily raised the holding limit of foreign currency points to enable their use for overseas payments. The authorities stated, "By permitting the transfer (remittance effect) of foreign currency prepaid electronic payment instruments to non-financial companies, healthy competition in foreign exchange services between financial and non-financial companies will be promoted, and from the consumer perspective, unnecessary exchange fees will be reduced and payment convenience improved."