Toss Bank's Saving Tribe Leader Song Kwan-suk speaks during a one-on-one interview with The Korea Times at the headquarters of the digital bank in southern Seoul in July. Courtesy of Toss Bank

The prevalence of internet-only banks in Korea continues to grow each year, highlighted by KakaoBank surpassing 23 million customers, while Kbank and Toss Bank each boast over 10 million customers.

However, Toss Bank is still the only internet-only bank in the country offering the ability to completely open a bank account online as well as issuing debit cards to foreign nationals residing in Korea. Following its launch in October 2021, Toss Bank introduced deposit services tailored to foreigners in Korea, starting back in May 2022.

In an interview with The Korea Times, Song Kwan-suk, who has been behind the bank's launch of services for foreigners as the product owner leading the bank's deposit accounts, emphasized that offering services to foreign nationals was integral to the digital bank's initial mission: Addressing the unmet needs in the financial market that traditional systems had yet to resolve.

"In my experience of living abroad for over six months, I found it extremely cumbersome to open a bank account as a foreigner. Recognizing that many foreigners in Korea face similar challenges, I felt addressing this issue aligns perfectly with Toss Bank's mission of promoting inclusive finance, and we believed that we could find a solution for the problem," Song said during the interview.

As a latecomer in the banking sector, Song explained that Toss Bank conducted extensive research to develop its pioneering service.

"To launch this service, our in-house legal team and I visited officials at the Ministry of Justice for consultations to access public data so that Toss Bank can properly provide banking services to foreign customers, while ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations," Song recounted. "Since such a service wasn't available before, we had to work diligently and think creatively to resolve these challenges," he added.

Such efforts led Toss Bank to become Korea's first bank, encompassing both traditional commercial and internet-only banks, to let foreigners open bank accounts entirely online.

This breakthrough allows foreign customers with official identification cards, such as alien registration cards and residence registration cards, to open accounts and receive debit cards from Toss Bank through a fully digital process. Previously, foreigners had to visit multiple institutions to prepare paperwork and physically submit documents to open deposit accounts.

He credits Toss Bank's diverse composition of staff for the successful launch of these services for foreigners. As a leading fintech company, Toss Bank's teams comprise professionals not only from banking but also from diverse fields such as IT and computer science. This diversity enabled them to tackle challenges from innovative angles.

"If we had only banking experts, they might have viewed it as difficult or impossible from the outset, trapped in traditional viewpoints. We didn't take anything for granted, which I believe is the source of Toss Bank's innovation," Song noted.

Toss Bank's Saving Tribe Leader Song Kwan-suk speaks during a one-on-one interview with The Korea Times at the headquarters of the digital bank in southern Seoul in July. Courtesy of Toss Bank

Currently, there are about 100,000 foreign customers, constituting about one percent of the digital bank's total customer base of 10 million. The top five nationalities among the customers are Chinese, Vietnamese, Uzbekistani, Japanese and American.

While noting that foreign customers have not yet contributed to the internet-only bank's profits, Song emphasized that profitability was not the primary focus when providing services for foreign customers in Korea.

"In fact, we do not approach foreign customers from a profit perspective at all. We were primarily motivated to address challenges that other banks have not yet solved," Song underscored.

He added that the bank could potentially expand into broader markets beyond Korea, although there are no immediate plans. The services for foreigners could lay significant groundwork and provide valuable experiences for future developments, he highlighted.

The bank offers foreign customers the same deposit services as Korean customers, including features like cashback services. However, they currently do not have access to Toss Bank's loan or foreign exchange services. Additionally, the predominance of Korean in Toss Bank's app, with limited English support, presents a challenge for non-Korean speakers. Song said that Toss Bank plans to improve English language support in its app.