President Lim Young-jin of Shinhan Card, center, shakes hands with Rotem Hershko, head of Amazon Global Export, left, and Bharat Maheshwari, head of the Global Business Development of Amazon, after signing an agreement on mutual cooperation between Shinhan Card and Amazon at the head office of the credit card firm in Eulji-ro, downtown Seoul on Nov. 7. (Photos: Shinhan Card)

Shinhan Card will strengthen its partnership with U.S. tech giant Amazon to enhance customer benefits over the next three years. “We will boost cooperation to provide tailored services to best meet the needs of customer in both countries,” a Shinhan Card official said.

The alliance is aimed at maximizing customer benefits from the use of Shinhan's online platform PayFan, through which services from the U.S. firm will be available.

“We are pleased to work with Shinhan Card to provide new ways for customers in Korea to shop on Amazon.com. We are always looking for ways to improve the customer experience and today’s announcement is another step in that process,” Amazon Global Director Rotem Hershko said.

The cooperation is in line with the group’s two key intitiatives - globalization and digitization - led by Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung who visited the U.S. firm’s headquarters in Seattle in October 2017.

The visit followed a strategic collaboration agreement between Shinhan Financial and Amazon six months earlier in April.

Shinhan Card Co. said that it will launch a special Christmas shopping event in cooperation with global retail giant Amazon that will provide benefits to customers.

The company said card holders who use the Global Plus service on its mobile PayFan platform linked to Amazon’s portal can get $15 off if they buy goods worth $150-500. For online purchases exceeding $500, Shinhan Card users are eligible for an immediate $50 discount.

An ad for a discount offered to the customers for their purchases of goods thru Amazon.Com.

The Global Plus service, first launched in October, aims to cater to people who frequently buy products online directly from foreign outlets.

It offers distinct benefits to consumers who use it to make transactions on such sites as Hotels.com, Uber and Airbnb.

Shinhan said the latest tie-up follows the considerable demand generated when similar benefits were offered in cooperation with Amazon during this year's Black Friday shopping season.

“The company will strive to bolster its competitiveness by providing convenience and differentiated services to our customers,” a corporate insider said.

Recently it was reported that South Korea’s biggest card company, Shinhan Card, will launch a blockchain-based payment system. The firm, part of Shinhan Financial group a sister company to Shinhan Bank, claims to be the first to use the technology for credit card transactions.

In an interview with Korea Times, Shinhan Card’s digital head Ryoo Tae-Hyun revealed that the firm is working on multiple innovations. These include facial recognition, Internet of Things (IoT), and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for payments. All the initiatives move towards its goal of ‘deviceless’ payments.

Shinhan Card plans to issue its own blockchain-based cryptocurrency to users of its credit cards. With DLT, transaction records would be immutable allowing the firm to trace credit more efficiently. It has already gained a patent for the system in Korea and has applied for one in the US, China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the EU.

Ryoo explained: “With our system, we provide our customers with cryptocurrencies available at our affiliated stores, in accordance with their credit limits.”

“Cryptocurrencies developed by other blockchain companies can only be used at a limited number of stores. Ours can be used at a wider range of places, because we have served as a platform for our customers and affiliated stores for over the past 30 years,” he continued.