HANKOOK NFC
NFC-based mobile payment and authentication technology solutions.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor | €0.0 | round |
N/A | Seed | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Hankook NFC Inc. is a South Korean financial technology company established on April 1, 2014, by CEO Richard Hwang. The company specializes in developing payment and authentication services using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Its core mission is to replace traditional point-of-sale (POS) hardware with smartphone-based solutions, aiming to create a "cashless society".
The company's flagship services, including PayApp, Phone-to-Phone Pay, and SnappyWire, enable individuals and small merchants to accept various forms of payment directly on their smartphones without needing a separate card reader. This is achieved by tapping an NFC-enabled credit card on a smartphone or through phone-to-phone transactions. Their technology supports credit cards, debit cards, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay. A key feature is that credit card information is not stored on the smartphone, enhancing security. For non-NFC cards, the company has worked on OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to process payments by scanning the card with a phone's camera.
Hankook NFC's business model targets small and medium-sized enterprises, freelancers, and sellers at flea markets or in-person sales environments who may not have a business registration certificate. The company launched 'PayAppLite,' a service designated as an innovative financial service by South Korea's Financial Services Commission, which allows non-business individuals to receive card payments. Revenue is generated from transaction fees.
The company has actively expanded into the global market, particularly Japan and the United States. In 2017, it secured a KRW 3 billion investment from Japan's Miroku Jyoho Service (MJS) to launch its services there. By that time, total investments, including from domestic firms like KDB Capital and L&S Venture Capital, reached KRW 5.5 billion. For its U.S. and global expansion, Hankook NFC established an American subsidiary, SnappyWire Inc., and partnered with payment processor Stripe to launch its mobile POS platform, SnappyWire.
Keywords: mobile payments, NFC technology, fintech, point-of-sale, POS systems, phone-to-phone payments, payment authentication, contactless payments, payment gateway, small business payments, mPOS, PayApp, SnappyWire, Richard Hwang, cross-border payments, mobile commerce, cashless society, payment processing, financial technology, card-not-present