SEOUL, Jan. 8 (Korea Bizwie) — The PyeongChang Winter Olympics will only accept Visa credit cards for purchases of tickets, souvenirs and other goods at the games venues, officials said Sunday, a move that could cause inconvenience for people who use other cards. Visa enjoys the exclusive right to be the only credit card that [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean investors have pulled about 40 trillion won (US$37.7 billion) out of money market funds (MMFs) over the past seven months as they sought higher returns in stock and property markets, data showed Friday. Outstanding MMFs totaled 99.3 trillion won as of Tuesday, compared with 138.8 trillion won [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of the country’s top mobile messenger service Kakao Talk, will launch debit cards next week to jump into the offline payment business, company officials said Friday. Promotional events are already under way before the official launch Wednesday for the debit cards that will be linked [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 40 percent of last year’s stock trading in the secondary KOSDAQ market was done on smartphones, gradually phasing out transactions through computers and telephones, data showed Thursday. A daily average turnover of 291.48 million shares, or 39.6 percent of the total, on the tech-laden KOSDAQ was generated over [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s first Internet-only bank, K-Bank, hopes to raise 500 billion won (US$469.7 million) in a new share sale during the first quarter of this year, the bank’s chief executive said Wednesday. However, Shim Seong-hoon, CEO of K-Bank, said he did not set the target in the planned stock [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The United Arab Emirates (UAE) purchased a net 967 billion won (US$908.6 million) worth of South Korean stocks last November, raising its holdings of local equity by 7.8 percent from a month earlier, data showed Wednesday. The UAE, which held 9.4 trillion won worth of South Korean stocks at [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Twice as many exclusive licenses for insurance products were handed out in 2017 compared to the year prior, a record breaking number. The surge in what are essentially insurance product patents was caused by two factors: the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standard 17 (IFRS17), and the government’s modification [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – A hike in the base rate by the South Korean central bank is expected to increase funding costs of local businesses, a report said Tuesday, amid the recent trend of monetary normalization. According to the report published by the Korea Institute of Finance (KIF), if the Bank of Korea [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — The South Korean government has been developing a system that is likely to start banning the use of anonymous accounts in cryptocurrency transactions from around Jan. 20, financial industry sources said Tuesday. The system is a part of follow-up measures after the government announced last week a set of [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — People who invested in stocks last year received the highest returns compared with those who betted on real estate, funds, gold and other assets, financial data showed Tuesday. The benchmark KOSPI ended 2017 up 21.76 percent from a year ago. The increase is 15.5 times the 1.4 percent annual [...]