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| Shinhan Financial Group's headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times file |
Shinhan Financial Group's digitization investments will grow to 2 trillion won ($1.7 billion), the largest among local banking groups' digital transformation budgets, up from this year's 800 billion won, industry officials said Thursday.
"Our board members were informed of the digitization plan during Thursday's meeting on the direction of our business strategy next year," a Shinhan official said.
Among the 2 trillion won, Shinhan Bank will spend 1 trillion won.
The key subsidiary of Shinhan Financial Group will use most of the money for its online-to-offline (O2O) businesses, including its food delivery app which will be launched later this year. It seeks to tie up with 80,000 stores in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province for the stores to deliver their foods using the bank's mobile app.
The bank will also continue to improve its artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain technologies, while considering investments in fintech and mobile platform companies.
Shinhan Card will increase the size of its investment in digitization to 345 billion won next year from 155 billion won this year.
The credit card issuer will focus on expanding its presence in the mobile payment industry, putting effort into its facial recognition-based payment system "Shinhan Face Pay," so that it will be used more widely.
It is also considering investing in mobile platforms specializing in fashion next year, following this year's partnerships with Naver Z, the operator of Naver's "Zepeto" metaverse platform and Bungaejangter, an online secondhand market platform provider.
The remaining 60 billion won will be used for Shinhan's other subsidiaries.
