Used Goods Market Lowers Consumer Entry Barriers with Safety, Convenience, and Benefits Triple Advantage

The secondhand trading industry is strengthening its secure transaction system to lower the entry barriers for consumers who feel uneasy about trading used goods.

On the 18th, according to the secondhand trading industry, each company is building secure transaction systems and introducing more convenient transaction features and services to provide consumers with a trustworthy and highly satisfactory secondhand trading environment.

Bungaejangter Safe Payment Screen. (Photo by Bungaejangter)

This movement in the industry is because consumers feel entry barriers due to concerns about fraud and inconveniences during secondhand transactions. According to the ‘Experience Using Secondhand Trading Platforms’ survey released by Consumer Insight, a consumer research specialist organization, buyers cited concerns about the quality of traded goods (47%) and fears of fraudulent transactions (46%), followed by communication and price negotiation with sellers (33%), and exposure of personal information (22%) as inconveniences when purchasing on secondhand trading platforms.

In response, the secondhand trading platform Bungaejangter has applied escrow-based secure payment to all transactions starting from August, the first among the top three domestic secondhand trading platforms. Escrow is a system where a third party holds the consumer’s payment until the product delivery is completed, then pays the seller.

Bungaejangter has introduced easy payment services such as credit and debit card payments, Naver Pay, Toss Pay, Kakao Pay, and Payco along with secure payment for secondhand transactions. It also supports mobile phone payments, convenience store payments, and bank transfer deposits (virtual accounts), making it safer and more user-friendly than cash account transfers.

Additionally, to reduce concerns about counterfeit goods, Bungaejangter established the first ‘Authenticity Inspection Center’ in a secondhand trading platform, covering 1,700㎡. It operates the ‘Bungae Care’ service, which provides authenticity inspection and polishing services.

The local community platform Danggeun has recently launched the ‘One-Time Transaction’ feature to create a convenient trading environment for users. This feature, introduced to enhance convenience and communication efficiency in secondhand trading, supports purchasing multiple items from the same seller at once.

Unlike before, when buyers had to capture each item’s post screen or open separate chat rooms for each item to communicate with the seller, the One-Time Transaction feature allows buyers to purchase multiple desired items in a single chat room and write transaction reviews all at once.

Meanwhile, amid the industry’s efforts to improve the secondhand trading environment, the number of secondhand trading app users has reached an all-time high.

App and retail analysis services WiseApp, Retail, and Goods surveyed domestic smartphone users and found that last month, the number of installs of major secondhand trading apps was 33.78 million, with 22.64 million active users, marking an all-time high.

Last month, the most used secondhand trading app was Danggeun with 21.25 million users, followed by Bungaejangter with 4.68 million, and Junggonara with 1.68 million. All three major secondhand trading apps achieved their highest number of users since launch. In particular, Bungaejangter showed the largest user growth, increasing by 33% compared to the same month last year.