Samsung Group, South Korea’s most powerful corporate conglomerate, is poised to conquer the country’s financial app market, which is crowded with local fintech companies and traditional banks, with the rise of Monimo, a mobile financial platform launched by a merger of its financial subsidiaries.
Samsung Financial Networks said on Tuesday that Monimo recorded more than 10 million members this month, two years and four months after the financial services app was launched.
It took three years and nine months for the country’s leading fintech platform Toss to break the 10 million mark.
Monimo is an integrated financial services app that offers various services such as managing various Samsung financial services accounts, money transfers, foreign currency exchange, and searching and comparing prices for real estate and cars.
It was launched in April 2022 by Samsung Financial Networks, which consists of Samsung’s four financial subsidiaries – Samsung Card Co., Samsung Life Insurance Co., Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co. and Samsung Securities Co.
Compared to the rather muted response immediately after the launch, the recent performance is an encouraging sign of Monimo’s growth into a super financial app.
A super app is a mobile or web application that allows its users to perform multiple tasks in one place, including social networking, banking, e-commerce, messaging, and more.
Due to the enormous growth potential, this is a hot market that fintech and financial holding companies want to conquer.
Korea’s super financial app market is already being challenged by the country’s major financial platforms operated by Naver Corp., Kakao Corp. and Toss Bank.
The country’s commercial banks are also actively exploring opportunities in the market with their own mobile banking apps.
Banking services
To conquer the market, Monimo has asked Korean commercial banks to partner with it to improve its service.
In March, Samsung Card, the representative of Samsung Financial Networks, proposed that the country’s five leading banks – KB Koomin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and pure-play internet bank K Bank – join forces and launch a super financial app based on Samsung’s Monimo.
Samsung’s financial app has asked a bank to cooperate because the Korean corporate empire is prohibited from directly owning a bank.
Of the five commercial banks, KB Koomin Bank has partnered with Monimo to develop a current account that also pays interest.
With the new feature, Monimo should be competitive enough to shake up Korea’s super-finance app market, analysts said.
The number of monthly active users reached 5.24 million this month, surpassing the MAU of other local mobile payment platforms such as Naver’s Naver Pay with 2.33 million and Shinahn Financial Group’s Shinhan Super SOL with 2.93 million.
Monimo’s MAU grew by about 2 million in a year, placing it just behind Kakao Corp.’s popular digital wallet app Kakao Pay at 5.47 million.
In June, Samsung Financial Networks applied to the Financial Services Commission (FSC) for approval as an innovative financial services provider under the country’s financial regulatory sandbox program to offer a bank account service on Monimo.
Addition of a mobile payment service
Since the process of obtaining FSC approval for the designation takes about three to four months, Monimo is expected to launch the new bank account service in the fourth quarter of this year.
To attract Monimo users, Samsung and KB Koomin are expected to offer the industry’s highest interest rate on deposits.
To accelerate its penetration of the Korean super finance app, Monimo has also launched its own mobile payment service called Monimo Pay, which enables both online and offline payments in the app.
Monimo did not offer its own in-app purchasing service, so users had to rely on the Samsung Card mobile app for in-app purchases.
Write to Hyeong-Gyo Seo and Mi-Hyun Jo at [email protected]
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
