Kakao Mobile Gift Certificate Fees Lower and Settlement Deadline Shortened

Along with the delivery app fee, the upper limit of the commission rate for Kakao mobile gift certificates, which franchisees are complaining of another burden, will be reduced from 15% to 9%, and the settlement cycle will be shortened to about a month.

A public-private consultative body for mobile gift certificates, which includes Kakao, a distributor of mobile gift certificates, five issuers, the National Council of Franchisees, and the Korea Franchise Industry Association, agreed to win-win Kakao mobile gift certificates.

As a result, Kakao will lower its commission rate from the current 5 to 14 percent to 5 to 8 percent within the first quarter of next year, and if the issuer's commission rate, which is 0 to 1 percent, the mobile gift certificate commission rate will fall to 5 to 9 percent.

The public-private consultative body decided to adjust the commission rate paid by the store owner to 3.5% or less, especially if the franchise headquarters and the store owner pay the commission half and half.

At the same time, Kakao has decided to increase the number of monthly settlements and drastically reduce the period in which issuers settle with the franchise headquarters so that store owners can receive payments 67 days after current consumers use mobile gift certificates in 37 days.

The Fair Trade Commission will also push to increase the refund rate of expired mobile gift certificates from 90% to 95% in the first half of next year.

To this end, the Fair Trade Commission will revise the standard terms and conditions for new types of gift certificates.

However, these terms and conditions do not apply to mobile gift certificates that consumers receive free of charge.

The annual mobile gift certificate market is 10 trillion won, of which mobile gift certificate transactions through Kakao Gift are estimated to be 3.8 trillion won as of 2023, but franchisees have complained of burden due to high fees and long settlement cycles.

Since April, the FTC has revised its review guidelines, requiring franchise headquarters to obtain more than 70% of the owner's consent when issuing mobile gift certificates.

The Fair Trade Commission plans to induce shop owners to receive a 3.5% Kakao preferential fee rate by sharing the mobile gift certificate fee in half.