SK Telecom and Hana leading mobile credit payment charge

There are some interesting things going down in South Korea when it comes to mobile payments. The largest operator in the country (and one of the largest in the world) SK Telecom has today confirmed the purchase of a 49% stake worth $350 million / €240 million in the credit card unit of Hana Financial Group. The intersection of these companies could lead to an unprecedented growth in mobile payment options for South Koreans.

Hana Financial Group is the third largest bank in South Korea, but it has traditionally focused on SMEs and a few big individual clients rather than consumer banking. As a result Hana Card, its credit card unit, has never really been all that huge. A short time ago, the Group span Hana Card out as its own company to fend for itself - and Hana Card is pushing hard. Add this to the big investment from SK, and you could see some very interesting moves in the near future.

What’s the deal?

Basically, SK Telecom wants to be the forerunner in publicly adopted mobile payments. South Korea is an incredibly saturated mobile market, and consumers needs to be attracted rather than acquired - and offering good services is one the main ways to attract consumers (once you’ve lowered your rates as much as you can bear).  SK Telecom CEO Chung Man says that SK plans to “launch a next-generation payment service in the future through cooperation with Hana Card. Through a partnership, both companies will seek a convergence of telecom and financial services.”

SK says that mobile credit cards will be coming to consumers shortly, that will allow people to make wireless payments on their phones, along with other financial services.

What we think?

Why did I use the word “unprecedented” in the intro paragraph? Because SK Telecom is just so damn big. It’s something that has been said again and again during 2009 - the people who are best positioned to make mobile commerce a reality are the mobile operators. They have a presence in all the right areas, from actual devices to services to payments processing. And SK Telecom has roughly 50% of all mobile users in South Korea on its books. If an operator of that size decides to buy a chunk of a card company and push mobile payments to a large number of mobile owners, then we’re looking at the potential for true m-commerce success.