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| Toss Bank was the first lender to adopt a daily interest payment service in March 2022. Korea Times file |
By Yi Whan-woo
Commercial banks are increasingly interested in offering accounts that pay a certain amount of interest to customers every day, as compared to every month under the current system, in order to secure more deposits.
The daily interest payment was introduced by Toss Bank, an internet-only lender, in March 2022.
It allows account holders to receive interest, worth 3 percent annually, once a day instead of once a month if they choose to do so.
More than 3 million customers used the service since its introduction and interests paid so far amount to 267 billion won, according to Toss Bank.
"The service is so popular and the number of payments made last month alone surpassed 180 million," the company said.
Two other internet-only lenders, KakaoBank and K bank, adopted such services this year, in January and May, respectively, after learning that the service can effectively secure a large sum of deposits in the long term by attracting small amounts of savings.
"We can draw money at low cost while raising higher profits," an official at KakaoBank said.
Both companies assess that the new interest payment service is also helpful in securing monthly active users (MAUs) on mobile apps. MAUs are analyzed so as to gain more meaningful insights into how customers are engaging with a product. It is also useful to forecast customer churn and then respond to potential issues proactively.
Among offline lenders, Suhyup Bank was the first to launch the service in April.
The remaining offline firms said they do not have a specific plan to follow in the footsteps of Suhyup Bank or online lenders. Nevertheless, some of them said they are "closely keeping tracking of the growth" of the daily interest payment service and that they may adopt it if necessary.
"We regard the service as cost-efficient to raise capital by offering benefits that customers need instantly," a public relations staff member at a major bank said.
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