Image credit: KobizMedia/Korea Bizwire
SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Despite the overall growth of South Korea’s fintech industry, including the market for wire transfers and payments, cryptocurrency exchanges have seen drastic cuts in revenue and operating profits.
CEO Score, a business analysis agency, studied the performance of 186 fintech firms based on public reports from the last three years, which showed that overall revenue jumped by 13.5 percent from 3.9 trillion won ($3.4 billion) in 2018 to 4.5 trillion won ($3.8 billion) in 2020.
In contrast, cryptocurrency exchanges were the only fintech sector to sustain a loss. With plunging transactions, overall sales dropped by 56.2 percent from 956 billion won ($826 million) in 2018 to 419 billion won ($362 million) in 2020.
Only the wire transfer and payment sectors in the fintech industry have seen a boost in operating profits. While they sustained a deficit of 148.7 billion won ($128 million) in 2018, they managed to reach a surplus of 33.1 billion won ($28 million) in 2020.
Cryptocurrency exchanges saw their operating profits drop by 57 percent from 595.6 billion won ($514 million) in 2018 to 339.8 billion won ($293 million) in 2020.
Image credit: KobizMedia/Korea Bizwire
The top 10 fintech firms that have seen the highest rate of revenue increase included eight companies from the wire transfer/payment sector including NHN KCP Corp., KakaoPay, and Viva Republica.
In contrast, cryptocurrency exchanges including Dunamu, Bithumb Korea, and Coinone were the three firms that saw the deepest plunge in revenue.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
