Food delivery services cash in on eat-at-home trend　

Total payments made on food delivery platforms Baedal Minjok and Yogiyo jumped 75 percent on-year in 2020 to reach a whopping 12.2 trillion won ($11 billion), according to retail market data tracker Wiseapp on Tuesday.

The stunning growth is attributed to strong demand for food delivery services in line with the South Korean government’s strict social distancing measures and lockdowns to slow down the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

The payment volume on the two platforms stood at 3.9 trillion won in 2018, and grew to 7 trillion won in 2019. In December last year some 1.4 trillion-won worth of orders were placed -- a monthly record, highlighting the accelerating transition toward mobile services during the pandemic.

Wiseapp analyzed data from credit card and mobile payments made by people aged 20 or over last year on both apps.

When including orders via phone, on-the-spot payments and orders from different food delivery platforms, the combined amount of payments in the entire food delivery industry is likely to be far larger than the 12.2 trillion-won payment transaction total, according to the data tracker.

The number of subscribers for food delivery apps has also sharply increased in recent months.

As of December, Baedal Minjok and Yogiyo had 13.7 million and 7.2 million subscribers respectively -- the highest numbers on record in both cases. Coupang Eats, a food delivery app run by e-commerce giant Coupang, had around 2.6 million.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)