July card spending exceeds 5 trillion won, used by about 35.44 million people
August spending nears 5 trillion won as users climb to about 35.95 million
Coupang's estimated credit and debit card spending surpassed 5 trillion won in July, hitting a record high and defeating fears that customers would abandon the platform following a massive personal data breach.
Mobile Index, a data platform run by AI data tech firm IGAWorks, reported Wednesday that Coupang's estimated card spending in July came to 5.09 trillion won. That was up 5.4 percent from 4.83 trillion won the previous month. That marks the highest monthly figure since the company disclosed the data breach last November.
Estimated spending in August came to 4.93 trillion won, nearing the 5-trillion-won mark and up 12.6 percent from 4.38 trillion won in August of last year. Monthly spending had fallen as low as 4.02 trillion won in February before gradually recovering.
The number of users also grew. Coupang's app logged about 35.95 million monthly active users in August, up roughly 510,000 from 35.44 million in July. That figure surpassed the 34.38 million monthly active users recorded in October of last year, before the data breach came to light.
The figure is about four times that of Naver Plus Store, which had about 9.04 million users. Despite a wave of account deletions and calls to boycott Coupang immediately after the breach was disclosed, the company appears to have suffered no lasting user exodus.
Domestic e-commerce platforms, by contrast, struggled. Gmarket's estimated card spending in August came to 247.7 billion won, down 25.9 percent from a year earlier. Eleven Street's spending fell 3.1 percent over the same period to 241.4 billion won.
Meanwhile, an AI algorithm estimated the spending figures based on credit and debit card transaction data. Naver Plus Store's own payment data was not included in the comparison.
soho0902@heraldcorp.com
