Ulsan City Resumes Issuance of Ulsan Pay from March 1, 2023

Discount Rate 7%, Purchase Limit Up to 200,000 KRW Per Person

Ulsan City will resume the issuance of Ulsan Pay, which had been suspended due to delays in national funding support, starting from March 1.

Ulsan City Hall.

The discount rate for purchasing Ulsan Pay this time is 7%, and the purchase limit per person remains the same at 200,000 KRW.

The annual issuance amount is 440 billion KRW, with a 7% discount support amount of 30.8 billion KRW, of which 7.1 billion KRW comes from national funds and 23.7 billion KRW from city funds.

Notably, this year’s national budget for supporting the issuance of local love gift certificates for Ulsan City (7.1 billion KRW) has been reduced to less than half compared to last year (18 billion KRW).

This reduction is due to the government’s differentiated support policy dividing areas into population-decreasing regions and general regions, with Ulsan City classified as a general region, resulting in decreased support and a corresponding increase in local government expenditure.

Despite this increased burden, the city decided to maintain the issuance scale at 440 billion KRW, the same level as last year, to provide some relief to small business owners and citizens’ households struggling with high interest rates and inflation.

An official from Ulsan City stated, “Although the issuance of Ulsan Pay was somewhat delayed due to the late arrival of national funding support this year, we hope it will help reduce the financial burden on citizens and boost sales for small business owners.”

Since its launch in August 2019, Ulsan Pay has been used by more than 50% of local residents aged 14 and above, establishing itself as a regional payment method with an average daily transaction amount of 1 billion KRW and about 70,000 transactions.

Usage is concentrated in supermarkets and marts (31.6%), food services (27.2%), and cafes and bakeries (12.4%), where many small-scale self-employed businesses operate, confirming a strong support effect for neighborhood commercial districts and small business owners.

In particular, mobile simple payments via QR codes offer the convenience of remote payments, making them popular among younger consumers, and since merchants bear no commission fees, it has been shown to have a real positive effect on sales growth.

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