Smartphone banking subscribers top 60m

The number of subscribers for South Korean mobile banking services reached 60 million in the third quarter, central bank data revealed on Monday.

According to the Bank of Korea’s July-September quarterly report on online banking, the number of smartphone banking subscriptions for 16 commercial banks operating here and the Korea Post reached a combined 60.08 million as of end-September, up 4.4 percent over the previous quarter.

As of end-September, 62.3 percent of all 115.3 million Internet banking users here also used mobile banking. The central bank added that the total mobile banking subscribers rose 3.6 percent on-quarter to 71.88 million.

The number of smartphone banking clients has increased sharply in recent years, from 37 million in 2013 to 40 million in the first quarter of 2014 and 50 million in the first quarter of 2015.

The total daily banking transactions processed on smartphones averaged 2.5 trillion won ($2.1 billion) in the third quarter, up 4.5 percent from three months earlier.

However, customers were still reluctant to use smartphone banking for transactions of large amounts.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)