Payments made without presenting physical cards rose 10.6 percent in the first half of this year from a year earlier, data showed. The share of easy-pay services in non-card-present payments also increased. The centre of card payments appears to be shifting rapidly to mobile.

A Bank of Korea report on domestic payment and settlement trends in the first half of 2026 showed average daily payment card use totalled 3.777 trillion won in the first half, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier. The growth rate has steadily expanded through the first half, following 3.7 percent in the first half of last year and 5.6 percent in the second half.

More striking than the overall increase in card use is the shift in payment methods. Payments made using mobile devices without presenting physical cards averaged 1.789 trillion won a day, up 10.6 percent from a year earlier. That was 4.3 percentage points higher than the 6.3 percent rise in the first half of last year.

Over the same period, payments made by directly presenting physical cards averaged 1.422 trillion won a day, up 2.5 percent. The growth rate was about one quarter of that for non-card-present payments.

As card use increases, payments routed through mobile devices such as smartphones are expanding faster than payments made by directly presenting physical cards.

More than half of payments without physical cards are made via easy-pay

The expansion of non-card-present payments is being driven by easy-pay services.

Card easy-pay services that store card information on mobile devices in advance and use simple authentication methods such as fingerprint recognition accounted for 52.6 percent of non-card-present payments in the first half of this year.

That was up 1.2 percentage points from 51.4 percent in the first half of last year and 0.3 percentage points higher than 52.3 percent in the second half of last year. More than half of the amount spent in non-card-present payments continues to be made through easy-pay services.

In card easy-pay services, the share held by fintech firms remained high. In the first half, fintech firms accounted for 72.0 percent of use of card easy-pay services, far above the 28.0 percent share for services provided by card companies.

The fintech share was similar to 72.3 percent in the first half of last year and 72.6 percent in the second half. The pattern continues in which fintech accounts for more than 70 percent of card easy-pay use.

The trend shows that as card use increases, payment behaviour is rapidly spreading in which users rely on cards stored on mobile devices and easy-pay services rather than using physical cards directly.

People are not taking out physical cards even offline

Payments made without taking out physical cards are not limited to non-face-to-face transactions. In face-to-face transactions such as at offline stores, non-card-present payments using mobile devices are also increasing.

In the first half of this year, face-to-face transactions within non-card-present payments averaged 426.0 billion won a day, while non-face-to-face transactions averaged 1.363 trillion won.

When total payments are split by whether they are face-to-face, face-to-face payments averaged 1.8 trillion won a day, up 5.6 percent from a year earlier, while non-face-to-face payments averaged 1.4 trillion won, up 8.6 percent.

As non-face-to-face payments rise relatively quickly and mobile device payments also expand offline, payment methods that do not involve taking out physical cards are spreading across both online and offline channels.

As card use continues to increase, the centre of gravity in payment methods appears to be shifting from physical cards to mobile and easy-pay.

An industry official said, "As consumers become accustomed to registering cards on smartphones and paying that way rather than taking out physical cards directly, mobile-based payments are becoming an everyday payment method." The official added, "Card companies are also strengthening both their own easy-payment services and links with external pay platforms."