Money Today | Woori Card’s ‘Card of Standards’ Tops 2 Million Enrollments… What’s Behind the Boom?
Money Today reported that Woori Card's flagship product 'Card of Standards' surpassed 2 million enrollments about 8 months after launch. It reported that a customer-centered philosophy reflected across product planning, service design, and design from the start of CEO Jung Won-jae's tenure was the secret to its popularity, and that a work by Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung was used in the card design.
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Select-and-concentrate strategy: cutting unnecessary benefits to focus on customized rewards.. Woori Card's second-ever 2-million-enrollment milestone since spinning off
Woori Card's ambitious project 'Card of Standards' has surpassed 2 million enrollments about 8 months after launch, quietly causing a stir amid a downturn in the card industry. This is only the second time in the 5 years since Woori Card spun off from Woori Bank that a product has topped 2 million enrollments.
◇Over 2 Million in About 8 Months, a Boom with Good Reason = As the first product of his tenure, CEO Jung Won-jae launched 'Card of Standards Point (POINT)' last April. Thanks to Jung's meticulous attention to every detail, from product composition to design, differentiating it from existing cards, it topped 1 million enrollments within 5 months of launch and reached 2 million in about 8 months.
Card of Standards is only the second product to surpass 2 million enrollments since Woori Card spun off from Woori Bank in April 2013. The Ganada Card, launched in 2014, topped 2 million enrollments in mid-2015. As the card industry has struggled with a downturn and market saturation, only a handful of products have recently surpassed 2 million enrollments, such as Shinhan Card's 'Deep Dream Card' series and Hana Card's '1Q Card' series.
Notably, Card of Standards stands out for its high issuance rate among younger customers in their 20s and 30s. While existing Woori Card products saw issuance rates in the 30% range among this age group, Card of Standards reached about 40%.
The key success factor was 'selection and concentration.' The strategy of reflecting a customer-centered philosophy at every stage, from product planning to service design and design -- aiming to create 'a product that sells itself' rather than 'a product that has to be sold' -- paid off.
Through big data analysis, Woori Card concentrated benefits on high-usage categories optimized for spending patterns. For example, Card of Standards Point offers higher point accumulation benefits for the 10 business categories customers use most frequently.
With L.Point, customers can earn L.Point rewards just by using Woori Card, and receive additional accumulation benefits when using Lotte affiliates and L.Pay. Discount offers discounts at all domestic affiliated merchants regardless of the previous month's spending. Shopping focuses primarily on providing discounts for online and offline shopping. In line with the rise of simple payment services, an additional 3% is accumulated when using major simple payment services such as Naver Pay, Kakao Pay, Payco, and SSG Pay.
The design was also differentiated with a style not seen before. It adopted a work by Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung, aiming for a design people would want to own, while placing a 'ㄱ'-shaped notch in the upper right of the card plate surface to enhance usability. It also obtained a 'design patent' last October for its artistic design, which includes differently colored sections.
◇Cutting What's Unnecessary While Strengthening Core Benefits, "No Profitability Issues" = The card industry has recently focused on cutting marketing costs as earnings took a hit from factors such as reduced merchant fees. Card of Standards secured profitability through a strategy of cutting what's unnecessary while strengthening core benefits. Rather than offering complicated ancillary services, the saved costs were concentrated on services customers actually want. Cards with abundant customer benefits are typically loss-making, but Card of Standards has no major profitability issues.
A Woori Card official said, "For example, instead of offering the complicated services provided by existing products, such as a 3,000-won discount at movie theaters, family restaurants, and a 20% discount at coffee shops, we divided the lineup into point-type, discount-type, and shopping-type cards," explaining, "The point-type offers the highest accumulation rate, the discount-type offers a discount across all business categories, and the shopping-type offers a 10% discount across the entire shopping sector, including department stores, marts, and supermarkets."
As this strategy paid off, Card of Standards indeed shows a usage rate and per-person spending amount about 10% higher than existing flagship general-purpose products. Six months after issuance, its usage rate stood at 56.2%, higher than existing Woori Card products (47.9%), and the per-person spending amount six months after issuance was 477,000 won, about 16% higher than existing Woori Card products (410,000 won).