In April of this year, Naver's financial subsidiary Naver Financial launched the 'securities simple order service' that connects the web trading system (WTS) of brokerage firms with the Naver Pay securities page. However, two months later, it has been determined that the brokerage firms participating in this service are not seeing the influx of users they had anticipated.
The lack of proper promotion of the service's launch, along with the fact that many investors, even if they search for stocks on portal sites, are accustomed to systems (HTS·MTS) for actual transactions rather than the web, is believed to have influenced this. Brokerage firms, which pay over 50 million won to Naver each month as entry fees, are suffering from this situation.
According to the financial investment industry on the 30th, six brokerage firms, including Mirae Asset, Shinhan Investment, KB, Daishin, Hana, and Korea Investment, are participating in the securities simple order service launched by Naver Financial on April 29 to coincide with the regular trading opening. Mirae Asset, KB, Hana, and Korea Investment were the first four to participate, while Shinhan and Daishin joined later.
The securities simple order service allows investors to browse their interests in the securities category of the mobile Naver Pay app and, by pressing the 'simple order' button at the bottom of the screen, be redirected to the brokerage firm's WTS they are trading with. Investors only need to register their brokerage firm during their first use. WTS is a system that allows stock transactions directly on the web without downloading a separate program.
The six brokerage firms participated in this service hoping that users of Naver, the country's largest portal site, would flow into their firms through this service. These firms are paying 55 million won (including VAT) every month to Naver Financial. A representative of one brokerage firm said, 'I heard that the securities page of Naver Pay has about 3 million users. Even if just 1% flows in, it means securing 30,000 customers, so all participating brokerage firms had high hopes.'
However, two months later, it is said that the influx of investors into brokerage firms through the securities simple order service is so minimal that it could be said to be non-existent. An industry insider noted, 'While we did not expect a massive influx at the initial launch, we did anticipate a certain level of activity from collaborating with Korea's top portal, and the actual results are significantly below that expectation.'
Despite this, Naver has not actively promoted the launch of the securities simple order service. It is also reported that Naver Financial is thoroughly controlling individual promotions by participating brokerage firms. In this regard, some in the industry believe that Naver is watching the situation rather than announcing the launch due to the troubles it experienced before the service was released, while being cautious of financial authorities.
Initially, Naver planned to launch the securities simple order service by the end of 2023. However, due to repeated interventions by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) citing investor protection and other reasons, the launch had to be postponed until the first quarter of this year. The FSS finally opened the way by determining this year that the WTS linking service is not an investment brokerage activity requiring authorization but a simple consolidation function.
Given the difficulties experienced in rolling out the service, the perspective in the securities industry is that Naver is currently assessing the situation while checking for problems or side effects instead of aggressively promoting it. There are also reports that Naver plans to start a large-scale promotion of the service after finishing beta testing in July. A Naver representative stated, 'We also plan to secure more participating brokerage firms.'
However, from the perspective of the brokerage firms that participated earlier, they are already paying 55 million won monthly to Naver, leading to dissatisfaction. A senior representative of one brokerage firm stated, 'It is honestly hard to understand why we are being blocked from even informing about the service launch while still being charged.'