"Following All the Good Trends" Commercial Banks Riding the Wave of In-Bank Innovation

Frequent Launches of Similar Products Like Immediate Interest on Group Accounts and Safes
Impact of Inbank's 'Innovation' on Free Currency Exchange Cards and Super App Policies in the First Half of This Year

When internet banks create products, there are increasing cases where commercial banks follow suit. These include group accounts, zero foreign exchange fees, and super application (app) policies.

KB Kookmin Bank will introduce an interest immediate receipt service for its KB Group Safe product starting from the 27th of next month. Specifically, if customers apply to receive interest before the interest payment date, they can immediately receive interest accrued from the deposit date up to the day before the application. Toss Bank was the first to introduce the concept of the interest immediate receipt service and the Group Safe two years ago. Toss Bank paid interest monthly but started paying interest daily to customers who wanted it. Toss Bank was the first to allow customers to receive interest whenever they wanted. The concept of Group Safe is similar. In July, Toss Bank launched Group Safe, which allows storing surplus funds in a group account, offering an unlimited annual interest rate of 2% and paying interest daily. KB Kookmin Bank created the Group Safe first and later launched the interest immediate receipt service.

Among the five major commercial banks (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH Nonghyup), Nonghyup Bank launched the immediate interest receipt service in August. This service was introduced in the digital-only NH All One e-Account, and by simply pressing a button in the Nonghyup Bank banking app, daily interest is immediately paid, similar to Toss Bank. Toss Bank went further by introducing the ‘Divide and Save’ account earlier this year, which automatically pays interest daily.

The group account itself was first created by internet banks. KakaoBank started this service in 2018, and Toss Bank launched it in February last year. KB Kookmin Bank was the first among commercial banks to release the ‘KB Kookmin General Affairs Service’ in May of the same year, allowing customers to operate group accounts using their existing accounts.

The super app policies of commercial banks have also been influenced by the growth of internet banks. As Toss began offering all its subsidiaries’ services through a single app and showed significant growth, financial holding companies that had separate apps for each subsidiary started integrating their services into one app. Shinhan Financial Group launched ‘Super SOL’ last year, KB Financial Group is organizing other services around KB Star Banking, Hana Financial Group is revamping Hana One Q into a super app, and on the 28th, Woori Financial Group introduced ‘New Woori WON Banking.’ Nonghyup Financial Group is preparing to launch a super app in January next year.

This is interpreted as a strategy to prevent commercial banks from losing deposit customers, mainly attracted by internet banks’ deposit products. The combined number of customers for KakaoBank, K Bank, and Toss Bank in the third quarter was 47.48 million. Among them, Toss Bank, which launched the latest, increased by about 80% compared to the end of 2021 (26.4 million) when it started operations. Specifically, during the same period, KakaoBank grew from 17.99 million to 24.43 million, K Bank from 7.17 million to 12.05 million, and Toss Bank from 1.24 million to 11 million, recording nearly tenfold growth.