'Contactless Service Voucher'... 20,077 Companies Apply

Ministry of SMEs and Startups
Simplification of Requirements for Introducing Remote and Telecommuting Work

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daeseop] On the 18th, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that 20,077 companies applied for the 'Untact Service Voucher Project,' which supports the introduction of remote and telecommuting for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Untact Service Voucher Project provides vouchers up to 4 million KRW (including a 10% company co-payment) to SMEs that wish to utilize untact services such as video conferencing, telecommuting, and online education. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups simplified the support requirements and procedures by reflecting field feedback.

Among the application restrictions, regarding 'default on debt from financial institutions, etc.,' previously both the representative's and the company's defaults were checked, but now only the company's default is maintained as an application restriction, excluding the representative's default.

Also, when applying through the platform, applications can be made not only through mobile phone authentication (identity verification) under the representative's name but also through identity verification of the company's staff in charge.

In particular, the submission of the SME confirmation certificate by demand companies has been excluded from the mandatory documents. Since issuing the SME confirmation certificate requires various documents and can take more than 10 days if additional document preparation or review agency supplementation is requested, this inconvenience was taken into account.

Instead of the SME confirmation certificate, the Ministry plans to first verify SME status based on corporate information from credit information companies and will request supplementation only from applicants whose SME status is not confirmed.

Kim Juhwa, head of the Untact Economy Division at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, "Many SMEs face difficulties in establishing untact work environments such as telecommuting due to their company conditions. We will continue to listen to companies' opinions and improve the project so that more SMEs can transition to untact work environments."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.