Samsung’s Monimo set to disrupt Korea’s financial app market

Samsung Group, South Korea’s most powerful business group, is poised to crack the country’s financial app market crowded with local fintech companies and traditional banks thanks to the ascent of Monimo, a mobile financial platform launched by a union of its financial affiliates.

Samsung Financial Networks on Tuesday announced that Monimo garnered more than 10 million members as of this month, two years and four months after the financial service app’s launch.

It took three years and nine months for the country’s leading fintech platform Toss to break the 10 million threshold.

Monimo is an integrated financial service app offering various services such as the management of different Samsung financial service accounts, money transfers, foreign-currency exchanges and search and price comparisons for real estate and cars.

It was launched in April 2022 by Samsung Financial Networks composed of Samsung’s four financial affiliates – Samsung Card Co., Samsung Life Insurance Co., Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co. and Samsung Securities Co.  

Compared to a somewhat muted response to it immediately after its launch, its latest performance is an encouraging sign for Monimo’s growth into a super financial app.

A super app is a mobile or web application that enables its users to do multiple jobs in one place, covering social networking, banking, e-commerce, messaging and more.

This is a hot market for fintech and financial holding companies seeking to seize due to its great growth potential.

The Korean super financial app market is already challenged by the country’s major financial platforms operated by Naver Corp., Kakao Corp. and Toss Bank.

The country’s commercial banks are also active in unlocking opportunities in the market with their own mobile banking apps.

BANKING SERVICES

To win the market, Monimo has asked Korean commercial banks to partner to enhance its service.

In March, Samsung Card, Samsung Financial Networks’ representative, proposed the country’s five leading banks – KB Koomin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and internet-only K Bank – to team up to launch a super financial app based on Samsung’s Monimo.

Samsung's finance app has asked for a bank's collaboration because the Korean business empire was banned from directly owning a bank.

Of the five commercial banks, KB Koomin Bank has joined hands with Monimo to develop a checking account that also pays interest.

With the new feature, Monimo is expected to be competitive enough to upend the Korean super financial app market, analysts said.

Its monthly active users hit 5.24 million this month, topping the MAU of other local mobile payment platforms such as Naver Pay by Naver with 2.33 million and Shinhan Super SOL by Shinahn Financial Group with 2.93 million.

Monimo’s MAU gained about 2 million in a year, trailing narrowly behind the country’s popular digital wallet app Kakao Pay run by Kakao Corp. with 5.47 million.

In June, Samsung Financial Networks applied to the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to be an innovative financial service under the country’s financial regulatory sandbox scheme to offer a bank account service on Monimo.

ADDITION OF A MOBILE PAYMENT SERVICE

Given that it takes about three to four months to get FSC approval for the designation, Monimo is expected to offer the new bank account service in the fourth quarter this year.

Samsung and KB Koomin are expected to offer the banking industry’s highest rate for Monimo users’ deposits to woo its users.

To accelerate its penetration into the Korean super finance app, Monimo also launched its own mobile payment service called Monimo Pay, which enables both online and offline payment in the app.

Monimo did not offer its own in-app purchase service so its users had to rely on Samsung Card’s mobile app for in-app purchases.

Write to Hyeong-Gyo Seo and Mi-Hyun Jo at seogyo@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.