 |
Woori Card Headquarters (Photo = Woori Card) |
[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] Seoul, September 24, 2025 – New data from Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), submitted to the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, shows that Woori Card experienced the highest number of IT system failures and Hana Card recorded the most security breaches among Korea’s eight major credit card companies over the past five years.
Between 2021 and August 2025, a total of 144 IT system failures occurred across the eight card issuers:
Woori Card: 39 cases (highest)
Hana Card: 34 cases
KB Kookmin Card & Samsung Card: 16 cases each
Shinhan Card: 14 cases
Lotte Card: 13 cases
Hyundai Card: 12 cases
During the same period, four external cyberattacks were reported:
Hana Card: 2 cases, including a DDoS attack in July 2023 and another denial-of-service attack in June 2025
Shinhan Card: 1 system tampering incident in 2021, which caused financial losses of KRW 177.39 million to 73 customers
Lotte Card: 1 malware infection in 2025
Budget Cuts Raise Concerns
Despite repeated IT disruptions, several card issuers cut back on IT spending in 2024:
Hana Card: IT budget down 10.8% year-on-year to KRW 84.1 billion
Woori Card: IT budget down 9.1% to KRW 96 billion
BC Card: Lowest IT spending in the industry at KRW 77.5 billion, with per-member IT expenditure of just KRW 4,454 – less than half the industry average of KRW 10,775
Overall, the industry’s IT budget rose only 0.6% year-on-year to KRW 1.021 trillion in 2024, even as the number of cardholders increased by 1.9%.
Lawmaker’s Warning
Rep. Lee Heon-seung (People Power Party) warned that the combination of frequent IT failures and shrinking budgets raises significant concerns for financial consumer protection and service reliability.
Alphabiz Reporter Paul Lee(hoondork1977@alphabiz.co.kr)
