'Binsun' Delivery App Win-Win Council, Industry Disagreements Lead to 'One Mountain After Another' Agreement

Coupang Eats Proposed 5% Commission, but Delivery Fee Burden on Partner Stores Increases
Failed to Reach Agreement at 8th Meeting... Additional Discussions Planned Soon

The ‘Delivery Platform-Merchant Win-Win Council’ has repeatedly stalled and remains empty-handed not only due to disagreements between platforms and merchants but also because of differing positions among participating platforms. This means that they are struggling to come up with meaningful win-win measures as they have failed to reach a consensus even among delivery platforms themselves, let alone with merchants. However, as the eight meetings have failed to narrow the differences, the possibility of regulating commission rates through legislation has increased, which could rather lead to industry contraction.

According to the delivery platform industry on the 24th, the 8th Win-Win Council meeting held the previous afternoon also failed to reach an agreement on win-win measures. In this meeting, the delivery platforms presented revised positions from each company regarding four major demands raised by merchants in the previous meeting: easing the burden of commissions and other costs on merchants, indicating merchant burden items on consumer receipts, stopping the demand for most-favored-nation treatment, and sharing delivery riders’ location information.

Participants explained that active exchanges of opinions took place again on key issues such as easing the commission burden during this meeting. However, they failed to reach an agreement. The Win-Win Council requested the delivery platforms to organize their positions once more to prepare meaningful win-win measures. Based on this discussion, an additional meeting will be held soon to coordinate the positions of both sides.

The reason the Win-Win Council asked the delivery platforms to organize their positions is that the differences between the top two platforms in the industry were as prominent as the disagreements between platforms and merchants. Baedal Minjok’s win-win plan centers on a ‘differential commission’ applying preferential commission rates based on sales. Initially, they included a condition that preferential commissions would be applied if customer discounts were provided, but after merchants opposed this, they excluded it and have since presented a more advanced plan. It is reported that in this meeting, they proposed the existing plan to apply differential rates ranging from the current 9.8% down to 2.0%. Baemin also stated that if unfairness in the food delivery market improves, they are willing to consider expanding the scope of preferential commissions.

On the other hand, Coupang Eats was passive about lowering commission rates but proposed at this meeting to uniformly reduce the commission rate from the current 9.8% to 5%. While this commission rate meets merchants’ demands, they included conditions that could increase delivery costs, failing to gain agreement. Coupang explained, "The delivery rider payment proposed along with the commission reduction plan is based on amounts agreed upon by merchant groups and delivery rider groups."

Although an additional meeting has been scheduled, given the clear differences in positions and the complexity of interests involved, there is a possibility that no agreement will be reached. If the Win-Win Council fails to reach an agreement after further discussions, public interest commissioners will propose a mediation plan. However, since this mediation plan is not binding, there remains the possibility of regulating commission rates through future legislation. An industry insider said, "The Fair Trade Commission has stated that if no win-win plan is derived, it will consider legislation including a commission rate cap, which could serve as a trigger to expand regulations on the industry."