South Korea Is Pushing To Become A Coinless Society

The Korea Times reported Wednesday that the Bank of Korea would be considering ways to transform Korea into a "coinless society." The bank's officials plan to provide South Koreans cards instead of coins, especially since consumers are increasingly becoming comfortable with cashless payments due to the prevalence of mobile wallets, smartphones and mobile banking.

A Central Bank official said that they have been spending more than $40 million annually to make coins "and the cost society pays for their circulation reaches several times the amount." Hence, changing the current settlement system to cashless cards would help the whole society as well as the financial sector to "save unnecessary costs."

The report cited an example where an individual who purchased a $7.80 (9,500 won) item and gave $.821 (10,000 won) for payment, the consumer's change will be credited directly to the card connected to his account. 

The bank said their ultimate goal is to make South Korea a "cashless society". The initial move to a "coinless society" is a step towards reaching the goal.

In the digital world, the increasing acceptance of cashless payment transactions is reflected by the popular ApplePay and Android Pay mobile wallets and mobile banking using the internet, which has been utilized by millions of users across the globe.

While the goal is to make transactions cashless, the bank, nevertheless, affirmed that they never considered going as far as eliminating coins in the financial and consumer market.

"There still remain many legal obstacles for us to transit directly to a cashless society," said a bank official.

A 2013 article from Total Payments mentioned South Korea in the top 5 cashless countries in the world next to Sweden, Somaliland, Kenya, and Canada.