South Korea\'s financial watchdog is demanding stronger IT stability and internal controls from big tech-linked electronic financial service providers as they become part of everyday financial infrastructure. The move follows a string of system outages this year, including disruptions to payments, top-ups and remittances, online and offline payment failures and duplicate debits on automatic transfers. The regulator urged isolation systems to stop failures spreading across services and said it would conduct on-site inspections and take strict action over major incidents.

Toss Payments, an electronic payment gateway unit of Viva Republica, is launching a direct-integration payment solution in partnership with global commerce platform Shopify. Toss Payments said on June 24 that the partnership will allow users to access its payment solution within Shopify. Shopify-based online store operators can connect to the system through contract and setup procedures without separate technical development. Merchants can install an app in Shopify’s admin screen and activate payment methods.