Financial Services Commission to Refund 183,000 Card Merchants
Includes Small and Medium PG Companies and Taxi Operators
Corporate Taxis Included Starting This Year
The Financial Services Commission announced on the 13th that it will refund the fee difference to 183,000 newly identified small and medium-sized credit card merchants with annual sales of 3 billion KRW or less in the first half of this year.
The estimated refund amount is about 63 billion KRW. Calculated per merchant, approximately 340,000 KRW will be returned. The refund details can be checked starting from the 27th of next month.
From the 14th, preferential fee rates will be applied by sales bracket to 3,046,000 credit card merchants (95.8% of the total 3,181,000). This applies retroactively to merchants who opened as new credit card merchants by June 30 and initially paid the general merchant fee rate but were later identified as small and medium-sized merchants through National Tax Service tax data, resulting in a refund by applying the preferential fee rate retroactively. Each card company will refund the fee difference to the merchants’ card payment accounts.
The Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute has sent application notices to merchants eligible for the preferential fee rate starting from the 9th. The applied fee rate can be checked through the Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute call center or the integrated merchant sales transaction information inquiry system.
The refund amount is calculated as the difference between the card fees already paid by newly opened credit card merchants in the first half and the fees that would have been paid if the preferential fee rate had been applied. For example, a merchant who opened on January 1 this year and had credit card sales of 1.4 billion KRW over about seven months (annualized sales of 2.4 billion KRW) and already paid a 2.2% card fee can receive a refund of about 2.38 million KRW through this refund measure.
Preferential fees will also be applied to PG sub-merchants who receive card payments through PG companies (payment gateway companies) or transportation settlement operators, as well as individual taxi operators. Preferential fee rates will be applied to 1,786,000 PG sub-merchants with annual sales of 3 billion KRW or less (93.4% of all PG sub-merchants) and 166,000 individual taxi operators (99.6% of all taxi operators).
Whether the preferential fee rate applies can be confirmed through the PG company or transportation settlement operator used by the business operator. Among these, newly established businesses in the first half with sales volumes qualifying as small and medium-sized merchants (166,000 PG sub-merchants and 5,173 individual taxi operators) will also receive refunds of the fee difference.
Notably, starting this year, 1,300 general (corporate) taxi operators (76.1% of all corporate taxi operators) have been newly included as eligible small and medium-sized merchants and will receive the preferential fee rate just like individual taxi operators. This is according to the revised Specialized Credit Finance Business Supervision Regulations enacted this year. Since system development for applying the preferential fee rate to corporate taxi operators by transportation settlement operators is currently underway, the actual application timing of the preferential fee rate will be sequentially applied according to the completion of each company’s system development.
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