KakaoBank Returns 1.0688 Trillion Won to Customers Including ATM Fee Waivers

KakaoBank announced on the 27th that it has returned approximately 1.0688 trillion KRW in financial benefits to customers through fee waivers for cash withdrawal and deposit at ATMs, exemption from all loan prepayment penalties, and cashback benefits on check cards.

KakaoBank was the first in the financial sector to adopt Linux-based open source software, reducing system construction costs. This helped lower customers' financial burdens by offering fee-free deposit, withdrawal, and transfer transactions at all ATMs nationwide. The cumulative waived amount is 379.4 billion KRW, and the exemption amount for prepayment penalties is 173.5 billion KRW.

KakaoBank check cards provide cashback benefits regardless of usage performance. The ‘Friends Check Card’ surpassed 31 million cumulative issued cards last year and provided a total of 478.1 billion KRW in cashback benefits.

To strengthen financial consumer rights, KakaoBank is also actively guiding customers on the right to request interest rate reductions. Through this, customers have saved a cumulative 37.8 billion KRW in interest. According to the Bankers Association disclosure, KakaoBank recorded the highest number of interest rate reduction requests and approvals among internet banks in the second half of last year. In terms of interest reduction amounts, it ranked second among all banks.

The bank is also committed to preventing financial fraud through IT innovation. By the end of last year, the amount protected from customer financial fraud reached 64.8 billion KRW. This was made possible through voice phishing (telephone financial fraud) monitoring systems and Fraud Detection Systems (FDS). KakaoBank developed and applied its proprietary alternative credit scoring model (CSS), ‘KakaoBank Score,’ using 37 million pseudonymized combined data records, a first in the financial sector. It additionally supplied loans worth 810 billion KRW to medium- and low-credit customers who had previously been rejected due to financial information-based evaluations.

Moreover, last year, it supplied more than 2.5 trillion KRW in medium- and low-credit loans, with cumulative supply exceeding 13 trillion KRW since its launch.

KakaoBank stated, “Since our launch, we have introduced innovative services for customers’ convenient financial lives and achieved results linking growth based on IT innovation to reducing customers’ financial burdens. We will continue to contribute to ensuring that innovations introduced by KakaoBank spread throughout the financial industry and consistently translate into customer benefits.”