In South Korea, Big Tech's Power Struggle With Regulators is Way Ahead of the US (restofworld.org) 28
Seoul is reining in tech giants Kakao and Naver to save small business -- but it might be too little, too late. From a report: South Korea has left hard cash in the dust. The country is a virtually friction-free, digital payments dream, where just a fraction of purchases are done in notes and coins. Park Se-hwa's bookstore, on a commercial street in Seoul, is a holdout. Inside the narrow door, a sign reads: "The best way to support the bookstore is to pay cash." She bristles every time she processes a purchase by card, since it means she has to pay a fee to the bank, taking a slice out of the already thin income she brings in from book sales. Park refuses, on principle, to use payments services from local tech giants like KakaoPay or Naver Pay. She won't build a platform on Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth that built itself up by reinventing the publishing world. "Those big companies are the public enemy of booksellers," she said. Park, 31, has operated her bookstore for a little more than a year. Her first vocation out of college was in the national Air Force, working seven-hour shifts monitoring radar for signs of North Korean missile launches. She started again as an entrepreneur after spending years in a series of unfulfilling jobs, like an increasing number of young, educated Koreans.
With South Koreans' buying activity moving almost entirely online, and the margins of small businesses contracting, she worries that the texture is disappearing from Seoul's streets. "If you look in any new area, it's always just chain stores that open, the same corporate convenience stores and coffee shops. Independent stores can't compete with them," she told Rest of World. Park may seem an anomaly, but she isn't. Her fears reverberate as high up as South Korea's lawmakers and its steely antitrust commission, who have spent this year attempting to rein in the country's vastly powerful tech giants. Kakao and Naver, both multibillion-dollar, publicly-traded empires, are the main targets: They have rapidly expanded their tentacles into South Koreans' digital lives in a way that uncomfortably mirrors the country's previous generation of conglomerates, like Samsung and LG. The government worries that their growth is coming at the sacrifice of the country's small businesses, who they say are being crushed with fees and impossibly high levels of online competition. Over the second half of this year, the battle with regulators has intensified. Both Naver and Kakao recently backpedalled on plans to expand their fintech services when the Financial Services Commission abruptly tightened standards. As the companies' jitters mounted, KakaoPay twice delayed its plans for a stock debut, infecting potential investors with concern. A total of eight different bills, proposed by lawmakers from both main parties, are pending in the legislature. They look to impose stricter standards on what kinds of fees online platforms can charge users, how much they can charge advertisers, and other measures intended to rein in their growth.
With South Koreans' buying activity moving almost entirely online, and the margins of small businesses contracting, she worries that the texture is disappearing from Seoul's streets. "If you look in any new area, it's always just chain stores that open, the same corporate convenience stores and coffee shops. Independent stores can't compete with them," she told Rest of World. Park may seem an anomaly, but she isn't. Her fears reverberate as high up as South Korea's lawmakers and its steely antitrust commission, who have spent this year attempting to rein in the country's vastly powerful tech giants. Kakao and Naver, both multibillion-dollar, publicly-traded empires, are the main targets: They have rapidly expanded their tentacles into South Koreans' digital lives in a way that uncomfortably mirrors the country's previous generation of conglomerates, like Samsung and LG. The government worries that their growth is coming at the sacrifice of the country's small businesses, who they say are being crushed with fees and impossibly high levels of online competition. Over the second half of this year, the battle with regulators has intensified. Both Naver and Kakao recently backpedalled on plans to expand their fintech services when the Financial Services Commission abruptly tightened standards. As the companies' jitters mounted, KakaoPay twice delayed its plans for a stock debut, infecting potential investors with concern. A total of eight different bills, proposed by lawmakers from both main parties, are pending in the legislature. They look to impose stricter standards on what kinds of fees online platforms can charge users, how much they can charge advertisers, and other measures intended to rein in their growth.
Way ahead of the US? (Score:2)
I do not see what the article is trying to point at that makes them so, can anyone enlighten me?
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If electronic banking and payments is so integral, then like water or transportation maybe the Government should be providing the mechanism and system at zero cost.
That is a bad idea for many reasons, but neither Korea nor the USA is doing that. So how is Korea "way ahead" on this issue, as the headline claims?
In both Korea and America, people like the convenience and safety of e-payments while worrying about privacy and hidden costs. Neither seems to be "ahead" of the other.
I'm still trying to use cash whenever possible.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I carry cash...and in meatspace I really do try to use it as much as possible.
I admit, more and more I used credit cards that give me cash back...I do this mostly online, but more and more in meatspace too.
But I still try to operate as much as possible locally with cash.
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That or make some kind of open free standard that everyone can and will have to use or include.
Re:I'm still trying to use cash whenever possible. (Score:4, Informative)
Don't understand what not being tracked means, do ya?
That or make some kind of open free standard that everyone can and will have to use or include.
You mean such as cash?
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What would they need to track anyways? They would have a ledger that say that Person A sent $X at Y to Person Z. That is all that is needed. I am pretty sure checks are like this. Nothing fancy. Don't even include a memo in the note.
Cash is way too inconvenient to use most of the time.
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If they could do that in any meaningful way, they would have done this already LONG ago....
But we still see money laundering, and covert deals done with cash.
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public oversight is always possible
Are you okay with oversight run by Donald Trump's appointees?
through things like hearings and freedom of information act requests.
DNI James Clapper flat-out lied about mass surveillance at a congressional hearing and faced no consequences whatsoever for doing so.
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Why?
The govt. is one big entity I"m NOT wanting to hand over all my purchase history to.
Hence, my earlier post I'm trying to stick with cash as much as I can.
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I really do not look forward to a world where every single transaction can and will be tracked by God knows who.
If only there was some kind of peer-to-peer transaction system that could be built that would protect your privacy. Maybe one based on cryptography or something...
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I mean this is assuming any cryptocurrency evolves to the point of being able to process a meaningful number of transactions...
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It would be nice to find a cryptocurrency app that isn't tied to some exchange or broker. If I download apps, even recommended ones, first thing that is thrown on the screen is to create an account, and give all my personal details to feed the AML/KYC beast (supposedly.)
It would be nice to find a wallet app that is just a wallet app. It doesn't demand you attach to some exchange, doesn't ask for your SSN and personal info. Just processes transactions, has solid encryption for the private key, allows for
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I use cash for buying food, but an increasingly large amount of food options are card only. So I don't do delivery (except pizza, because the pizza delivery guy accepts cash). Big bonus is I don't end up helping Uber/DoorDash/Foodora/etc with their extortion. But there are places that I don't go to because they don't do cash at all.
Sure, they may say "We have no problem - it's never come up" - but that's because the people who would patronize your establishment simply choose to bypass it, so it never comes
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It's funny how people think differently.
When I started to read your post, my first thought for "food" was at the grocery store....then you mentioned hard to get without a card and I was puzzled how that would be...?
Then I read the rest of your post was about dining out at restaurants, delivery, etc.
It's just funny how differently people think....when I think food, I primarily think about buying groceries and cooking with dining out or delivery a very secondary thought.
Anyway,
They get ya by Tx fees OR Cash handling fees (Score:3, Interesting)
To the point about:
"Those big companies are the public enemy of booksellers"
But maybe, just maybe, it is that cash and money and currency and transactions are handled centrally by organisations surrounding by a regulator-enforced moat(s)?
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Oh, is somebody going to try to argue that cash is actually more efficient? For a small bookstore that doesn't keep 1 cash register busy that might be true. But come on. This is basically email vs snail mail. Electronic payment processing is certainly invasive of pu
She's a couple decades behind the times... (Score:2)
Public enemy #s 1 and 2 of independent and small chain bookstores... and the actual assassins of the vast bulk of that industry... were Barnes & Noble and Borders. The few survivors are the historic landmark shops that are fiercely guarded and patronized by locals willing to pay extra; like City Lights in San Francisco. All Amazon did on the book store front is swoop in and give Barnes & Noble and Borders a big taste of their own medicine. So, boo f-ing hoo... that sound you don't hear is that of
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Borders and B&N destroyed the small bookshops by offering better prices and way better selection. The first time I walked into a Borders, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I had never seen so many books, especially books for nerds. The small shops stocked the NY Times bestsellers and little else.
Then Amazon arrived and destroyed Borders and B&N by offering even better prices and even deeper selection.
The local booksellers lost, but the consumer got a much better deal.
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Small business (Score:2)
If you don't think the governmental bureaucracy, litigious environment, and collusive power of HUGE companies on regulators (who, let's be honest, are entirely out of reach and unresponsive to anyone but big lobbyists) hasn't been the basic cause of the death of small business in Korea (and yes, the US) you're not really understanding what a small business faces.
Cash (Score:2)
Eventually there will be a surcharge to pay in cash due to handling costs. It might actually get cheaper to do electronic transactions than deal with cash. I know that it is safer for the store owner.
Cashless is looming large... (Score:2)
The day will come when alcoholics will not be able to hide their usage from their health care providers unless they pay for everything in cash. That's the easy target. Then comes those that frequent fast food joints more than would be "acceptable". Ditto for cigarettes, cigars, etc.. Subsequently the question will be why there are large alcohol purchases at a club too close in time to a purchase of gasoline.
etc. etc. etc.
However, I figure there will be cash as an option as long as things like cocaine are ar
whiney (Score:2)