SEOUL, March 5 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of daily financial transactions using credit cards and electronic means continued to grow last year while the use of checks and promissory notes continued to dwindle, central bank data showed Thursday. The value of daily financial transactions using non-cash payment methods, including remittance services, came to 81.4 [...]
SEOUL, March 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The debt owed by households and small businesses in South Korea rose at one of the world’s fastest rates in 2019 in terms of its ratio to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), data showed Wednesday. According to the data from the Bank for International Settlement, outstanding debt extended [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — Overseas card spending by South Koreans fell for the first time in a decade in 2019 amid a slowdown in the number of outbound travelers and a weak local currency, central bank data showed Friday. South Korean people spent US$18.9 billion using cards abroad last year, down 1.7 percent [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s ratio of private debt to gross domestic product (GDP) grew at the second-fastest click among major economies in the third quarter of 2019, data showed Monday. Household debt in Asia’s fourth-largest economy accounted for 95.1 percent of the country’s GDP as of end-September last year, up 3.9 [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The Bank of Korea said Thursday it has issued over 6 trillion won (US$5.15 billion) worth of fresh banknotes ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday that starts on Friday. The move apparently comes in preparation for high demand for fresh bills due to the long-lived tradition of elders [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of banknotes and coins destroyed due to damage or contamination reached a 10-year high in 2019, with the face value of the damaged bills and coins growing slightly from a year earlier, the central bank said Wednesday. The Bank of Korea (BOK) said it had to replace [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s overseas investment funds almost doubled in terms of net asset value to account for nearly 30 percent of the country’s investment funds last year, as investors bet on higher yields outside the bearish domestic market, data showed Tuesday. According to the data by the Korea Financial Investment [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean wealth creators accumulate an average of 1.57 billion won (US$1.4 million) through savings and investment, a recent study revealed. Standard Chartered Bank Korea Ltd., the local unit of Britain-based banking giant Standard Chartered PLC., joinly conducted a survey of 1,000 wealth creators in Seoul and Busan. They [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Local securities firms are moving quickly to preempt the emerging retirement pension market as a future growth engine. The government will push for the mandatory introduction of retirement pensions through a legal revision, while introducing a retirement pension fund for small and medium-sized companies. The plan is aimed at [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Hyundai Card, a leading credit card issuer in South Korea, has agreed to launch a joint venture in Vietnam in its first direct overseas investment, the company said Tuesday. The company has signed an agreement to purchase a 50 percent stake in Vietnam’s Finance Company Limited for Community (FCCOM) [...]