About 60,000 retail stores will be participating in ‘Zero Pay’ project. 26 franchise headquarters such as GS25 and CU, Kyochon Chicken, BBQ Chicken, and other coffee stores announced their intent to participate in Zero Pay. While major simple payment providers such as KakaoPay and Toss have shown signs of withdrawing themselves from Zero Pay project, it will be interesting to see if participation of various franchise stores will provide momentum to demonstration project of Zero Pay.
Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) officially announced ‘Zero Pay BI’ on the 3rd and signed business agreements with local governments such as Seoul-Si, Busan-si, and Gyeongsangnam-do and 26 franchise headquarters.
26 franchise headquarters such as GS Retail, BGF Retail, 7-Eleven Korea, Paris Croissant, E-Mart 24, EDIYA Coffee, and Kyochon FNB have decided to put efforts into reducing financial burden for owners of their franchise stores.
Each headquarter is going to be active in increasing number of franchise stores that support Zero Pay and number of consumers who utilize Zero Pay. Franchise headquarters are predicting that Zero Pay will drastically reduce financial burden for owners of their franchise stores and improve their operating profits. MSS and local governments are planning to utilize public resources to increase number of consumers who use Zero Pay.
There were about 60,000 franchise stores that participated in this agreement. MSS is seeing that it has secured priming water for spreading Zero Pay as it faces demonstration project of Zero Pay that is supposed to take place sometime this month. It is expected that various discount and marketing events by these franchise headquarters will act positively for Zero Pay use.
MSS also officially announced Zero Pay BI (Identity) on this day. Letter O from Zero was written as number 0 to have ambiguous meaning. MSS expressed zero commission burden as an abbreviated image. QR kit that will be available at each franchise store is expressed as a ribbon from a gift box with traditional color that is associated with Saekdongjeogori.
MSS put out a public contest back in September for a name that would replace ‘Zero Pay’, which had been used temporarily to respond to a potential conflict that would break out as the name ‘Zero Pay’ was already applied for trademark rights.
As discussions regarding the name ‘Zero Pay’ with a person who already applied for trademark rights before MSS did were taking places smoothly and because there was already significant social awareness towards the name ‘Zero Pay’ due to various advertisements and media, MSS has decided to use the name ‘Zero Pay’ as the official name. It is planning to carry out an award ceremony for the public contest according to its normal schedule.
“Zero Pay project has taken its first step through introduction of BI.” said Minister Hong Jong-hak of MSS. “We are going to make sure that Zero Pay is established amongst markets as soon as possible by working with relevant departments, local governments and companies.”
Staff Reporter Park, Jungeun | jepark@etnews.com