Coupang Enters Broader Payments Market With Naver-Style Finance Push

Rocket Pay to Launch in Second Half

Coupang Pay has so far worked only within Coupang’s own app

New service will also be accepted by outside merchants, like Naver Pay

Coupang plans aggressive payment incentives

Battle for users with Korea’s three major payment platforms

Coupang and Naver Shopping, South Korea’s two dominant e-commerce platforms, have taken sharply different approaches. Coupang runs a direct retail model, buying products itself and delivering them straight to consumers. That gives it an advantage in building a more loyal customer base than Naver Shopping, which directs users to other online malls through price comparisons.

But that model has limits. By keeping everything in-house, Coupang has lagged Naver in scalability. Naver has placed greater emphasis on partnerships and connectivity.

The same divide has emerged in payments. Naver Pay can be used not only on Naver Shopping but also at outside merchants, while Coupang Pay has been limited to Coupang’s own services. Coupang concluded it needed to change course to challenge Naver Pay, which has been gaining market share with a broadly accepted payment service. Concerns had also grown that a payments product confined to the Coupang ecosystem could fall behind in South Korea’s fast-growing easy-payments market. That helps explain why the company is lowering barriers in payments even as it maintains its broader focus on control and internalization.

◇ Easy-payments market is growing fast

Coupang has so far kept not only shopping but also its fintech and financial businesses within its own platform. Coupang Pay, its easy-payments service, has operated that way, and lending by Coupang Financial, the company’s financial affiliate, has also been limited to merchants selling on Coupang.

The company, however, appears to have decided that strategy is harder to sustain in payments. The market for general-purpose easy payments keeps expanding. Data obtained by Democratic Party lawmaker Yoo Dong-soo’s office from the Financial Supervisory Service showed annual online and offline easy-payment transactions by Naver Pay, Kakao Pay and Toss Pay totaled 106.3 trillion won ($76.9 billion), based on card and prepaid payment volumes. That was up 14.4% from 92.9 trillion won ($67.2 billion) in 2024. It was also more than double the 50.6 trillion won ($36.6 billion) recorded in 2021.

By contrast, growth in Coupang’s existing business has slowed. First-quarter revenue at Coupang Inc., the US parent company, was 12.4597 trillion won, or about $9.0 billion, up 8% from a year earlier. It was the first time since the company’s 2021 New York listing that quarterly revenue growth fell to a single-digit pace. South Korea’s e-commerce market is saturated, and a major data leak last year also weighed on sales.

◇ Following Naver’s finance playbook?

Industry officials say Coupang’s move into general-purpose easy payments could reshape the competitive landscape. The company could use its reach across e-commerce, food delivery and content to recruit a large number of online and offline merchants through aggressive marketing.

“When Coupang entered the delivery platform business with Coupang Eats, it quickly secured the No. 2 spot by offering a range of incentives,” an e-commerce industry official said. Coupang already has experience handling payments at scale, the person added, which should help minimize trial and error.

Financial industry officials view Coupang’s payments push as groundwork for a broader finance business modeled on Naver. Naver launched a general-purpose easy-payments service in 2015 and rapidly expanded by linking shopping with finance. As its user base grew, it expanded into offline payments, the Naver Account and credit-loan comparison services. Coupang’s lending business through Coupang Financial is also reinforcing expectations that it could move toward a more comprehensive financial platform, similar to Naver.

“Coupang has so far limited its credit business to merchants on its platform, and its easy-payments service has only been available within its own app,” a finance industry official said. “The key to success will be whether it can extend that internalization-focused strategy to the outside market and make it stick.”

Bae Tae-ung, Hankyung.com reporter btu104@hankyung.com