The National Assembly has moved to amend the partial revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act (revision of the Act) ahead of the passage of the act to prevent the non-payment incidents related to T-MEP (TMON·WeMakePrice). This is to reflect the amendments requested by payment gateway companies (PG).
According to political circles on the 25th, the revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act, which was to be presented at the first meeting of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee (Legislation Committee) on the 26th, has been excluded from the agenda. The amendment, which passed the National Policy Committee, was awaiting implementation after passing the Legislation Committee and the plenary session. A National Policy Committee official explained, "The revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act must be discussed alongside the enforcement of the Large-scale Distribution Business Act, so it has been excluded from this agenda for further discussion."
The current revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act mandates that PG companies' settlement funds be guaranteed through means stipulated by presidential decree, such as deposits or trust management, with 100% external management. This standard was established because the T-MEP incident arose from inadequate management of settlement funds. If a payment service provider fails to comply, the Financial Services Commission can request corrective actions, and if unfulfilled, can take measures such as business suspension or cancellation.
The problem is that this provision was created as part of the amendment to be passed in the Large-scale Distribution Business Act. The Large-scale Distribution Business Act, which is currently pending in the National Assembly, restricts external management to 50% of the settlement funds. Distributors with affiliated companies like Baedal Minjok or those with their own PG systems, like SSG.com and Gmarket, can switch their platform model to be subject to the Large-scale Distribution Business Act instead of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act.
In other words, distributors with PG services can avoid the regulation of 100% external management of settlement funds under the Electronic Financial Transactions Act and can be subject to the Large-scale Distribution Business Act, which only requires 50% external management. Moreover, since the Large-scale Distribution Business Act is currently pending in the National Assembly, there are no immediate regulations that must be complied with regarding external management of settlement funds.
In contrast, out of 146 dedicated PG companies, 119 (81.5%) are small and medium-sized enterprises, which will face the situation of needing to comply with the 100% external management of settlement funds that incurs additional expenses. A notable blind spot is taxi service providers. This is because they effectively perform the same duties as PG companies by claiming the amounts from individual taxis before the customer payment goes to the card companies, meaning they too will be required to manage settlement funds externally at 100%.
Due to this, the PG industry has been strongly requesting the National Assembly to regulate the external management ratio of settlement funds in the revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act at the same 50% level as the Large-scale Distribution Business Act. They also emphasized that both the revision of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act and the Large-scale Distribution Business Act should be discussed and implemented simultaneously to avoid regulatory blind spots. A PG industry official noted, "As the electronic payment industry is a core infrastructure connecting small and medium-sized businesses with consumers, we hope appropriate regulations will be applied."