Why Startup CEOs Are Looking for Cafe Seats

Park Jun-gi, CEO of Payhere, Identifies Small Business Challenges Through Direct Experience
Incorporates Solutions into Mobile POS Service... Becomes Market Leader in 2 Years

Park Jun-gi, CEO of Payhere, is explaining the mobile POS solution.

Park Jun-gi, CEO of Payhere, is currently preparing to move his office near Gangnam Station and is looking for a place to run a cafe nearby. This is not a side business venture into cafe startups. Rather, it is to directly operate a business with his employees to identify the inconveniences small business owners may face and incorporate solutions to these problems into their offerings. Park’s belief that they must think from the perspective of small business owners running stores has been fully reflected in Payhere’s mobile point-of-sale (POS) software. This has been the driving force behind Payhere’s rise to the forefront of the mobile POS market in just two years.

On the 20th, CEO Park said, “The benefits of technology should be widely received by small business owners,” adding, “While large corporations adopt advancing technologies, we want small business owners to enjoy technological benefits that surpass those of large corporations.” The advanced technology Park refers to is the cloud-based mobile POS software introduced in 2020. Previously developing credit card and mobile payment systems at Danal, Park noticed that payment services used by small business owners were not user-friendly. He explained, “While online payments are evolving, offline payment experiences have not changed much because POS systems are not updated,” and added, “With the rise of mobile generation startups, we anticipated a demand for mobile POS.”

In the early days of the startup, many pointed out that the POS market was a ‘red ocean.’ However, CEO Park focused on making the software usable on any desired device such as smartphones or tablets and ensuring it was convenient enough for anyone to use after just one look. The market began to respond. Despite the COVID-19 situation, the number of franchise stores grew to 18,000, and the monthly transaction volume grew by an average of over 20% each month, surpassing 100 billion KRW. Internally, the company has set a goal to expand the number of franchise stores to 100,000 this year.

Building on these achievements, Payhere is expanding its services to automate and optimize small business stores. The goal is to automate the entire process from receiving reservations, having customers order and pay at the store, to encouraging repeat visits from these customers. Integration with Naver Reservation is already underway. A pilot service for kiosks enabling unmanned payments at stores has also been completed. They plan to enable real-time monitoring of information from these various solutions through the POS. CEO Park emphasized, “Many stores manage delivery sales and kiosk sales separately because the POS hasn’t evolved,” adding, “We will focus on the customer’s perspective and integrate management around the POS.”

Payhere is also considering overseas market expansion after next year. However, for now, the focus remains on the domestic market where continuous innovation can occur. CEO Park stated, “We will evolve into a company that provides services managing the entire store beyond just mobile POS,” and added, “Changing stores is not about hardware but software. POS software will be the field that can bring the greatest innovation in this market.”

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