Fintech app Banksalad sees no. of monthly active users triple to 1.5m
By Sohn Ji-young
Published : Feb 22, 2019 - 16:13 Updated : Feb 22, 2019 - 16:13
Banksalad, South Korea's leading mobile app for personal finance management, said Friday that the number of its monthly active users had reached 1.5 million, marking a threefold increase from its average for last year.
Founded in 2012 by local startup Rainist, Banksalad pools a user's financial information from different banks and finance companies into a single platform. This consolidates data for bank accounts, investments, savings bonds and more.
Kim Tae-hoon, co-founder and chief executive of Rainist (Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald)
Upon analyzing a user's financial assets and spending habits, the app recommends suitable financial products such as credit cards, deposits, savings, loans, insurance products and pension plans. Over the years, it has become a widely used financial technology app, gaining popularity with tech-savvy Koreans in their 20s and 30s in particular.
Reflecting Banksalad's growing popularity, Rainist said the app's MAU had surpassed the 1.5 million mark as of Feb. 10 this year. In contrast, its average for 2018 was 360,000.
The total number of subscribers also jumped, from 640,000 in 2018 to around 3 million as of this month. The amount of money handled by the app soared 770 percent on-year, from 10 trillion won ($889 billion) to 87 trillion as of this month.
"With the latest government efforts aimed at nurturing the fintech sector, Banksalad, which is participating in the finance segment of the government's 'My Data' initiative, is receiving more attention," said Rainist CEO Kim Tae-hoon in a statement.
"We expect the Financial Services Commission's open API project as well as regulatory sandbox policies to bring positive improvements to the fintech industry as well as Banksalad's business," he said.
By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)