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By Kim Yoo-chul
WeMakePrice (WMP), a leading social commerce platform providing e-commerce and internet advertising services, said Monday it will accept cryptocurrency payments within the first quarter of this year.
"WMP has partnered with Bithumb to become the highest-profile company accepting cryptocurrency payments," said Lee Hanul, a spokesman at the social commerce company. Bithumb is the country's top cryptocurrency exchange operator.
WMP will be the first online shopping mall operator allowing customers to pay for their purchases using cryptocurrencies.
"This is a real trend that everybody is talking about. The partnership calls for Bithumb to be in sync with WMP's mobile payment system Wonder Pay, under which the price that the customer should pay will be decided in accordance with the present value of a certain digital coin used for payment," Lee said.
"The key issue is how to address the issue over price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies; therefore, development of a real-time price checking system is in the pipeline to avoid any confusion."
Lee said cryptocurrencies are becoming more of a mainstream payment instrument and added WMP is jointly developing systems with the cryptocurrency exchange operator to make transactions more stable and transparent.
As anti-money laundering steps, the two companies agreed not to allow customers to purchase WMP-issued gift vouchers with virtual currency since they can be sold and traded for cash in offline markets.
"The official debut of the cryptocurrency payment system could be sometime within the first quarter of this year," the spokesman said.
Cryptocurrencies that are listed on the Bithumb exchange will be available for use. The supported currencies include bitcoin _ the most popular cryptocurrency _ ethereum, ripple and nine others.
WMP is specifically interested in developing systems to directly connect the cryptocurrency exchange into its Wonder Pay system without using processing system of banks or credit card issuers to help customers and to save their commission fees.
Coinmap, a market research firm tracking cryptocurrency-accepting stores in the world, said the number of offline stores that accept cryptocurrency payments was known to be about 140.
The WMP plan comes a day before the country's leading banks will begin allowing the simultaneous opening of accounts, deposits and withdrawals, as well as transfer of funds between these accounts and exchanges, which all require real name verification of customers.
No common rule or legal base has been established to ban all kinds of cryptocurrency trading. Therefore, cryptocurrencies are becoming ubiquitous with more businesses accepting them as payment for goods or services.
Prominent overseas retailers such as Overstock and Newegg have accepted bitcoin for years, while big names such as eBay, Amazon and Alibaba have formally adopted cryptocurrency payments.
On a related note, some retailers including video game distribution platform Steam have stopped accepting bitcoin payments in recent months, citing huge transaction fees that have accompanied bitcoin's meteoric rise. But analysts say while bitcoin still remains an "option" for high-priced ticket items, other "alt-coins" such as ethereum and bitcoin cash are accessible options for small-value transactions.
