Thick Cut
Apple Pay fees are causing controversy as the company is applying a 0.15 percent fee in South Korea. At present, the rate is 0.15 percent in the United States as well as South Korea, 0.12 percent in Russia, 0.05 percent in Israel, and 0.03 percent in China.
“Affiliated South Korean card companies’ burden is likely to increase with the domestic mobile payment market growing and Apple Pay’s share in the market expected to reach 15 percent next year,” said an industry source, adding, “At the rate of 0.15 percent, their daily fee amounts to more than 16 billion won [US$12 million] given that the average daily mobile payment usage in the market was 732.6 billion won [US$562.4 million] last year.”
According to credit card companies, the Samsung Pay fee is much smaller and imposed on a yearly basis and its fee is zero when it comes to mobile payment at offline stores.
Experts point out that a number of card companies are likely to partner with Apple after Hyundai Card’s exclusive partnership and then consumers may be adversely affected by the companies’ fee burden. This was already pointed out by the Financial Services Commission, which approved Apple Pay in South Korea last month. At that time, the commission told credit card companies not to shift their burden to consumers or stores.