Pay Gate

CEO, Soyoung Park

“I’ll make a change in Korea and make Korea a global financial hub.”

We’ll advance reasonably step by step. We made global enterprises use ours beyond borders. We’ll keep doing that”, says Soyoung Park, CEO of PayGate. She goes forward to the top in the world.

◆Exploring a new market / Growing as a global leader in Payment Gateway

Pay Gate has been doing only one business for 15 years, which isn’t a short time since it was established in 1998. Pay Gate is in partnership with Alipay China, Ten Pay, and China Union Pay. Pay Gate Japan has been collected Japanese yen through Japan Post Bank, Sumitomo Bank, UFJ, and Mizuho Bank for many years. Pay Gate Hong Kong has been working in partnership with global credit card brands including Visa, Master, JCB, and Amex. They are planning to open an online banking system for major countries including Europe.

It has been 15 years since they provided global credit card services. All systems of Pay Gate are built with OpenPayAPI of the latest web standard technology. This is their own solution that they developed on their own 100%.

It provides Unicode and encoding for diverse language including Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese and 172 currencies. Services for Korean customers include credit cards, transfer, virtual account, mobile payment, and mobile methods of payment. Services for global customers are provided by combining local methods of payment including international credit cards (Visa, Master, JCB, and Amex), CUP, Alipay, Ten Pay, deposits to Japanese bank accounts and European bank accounts.

Pay Gate services are provided to all countries in the world. Client companies and customers are in Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, etc. Pay Gate is a leading global PG (Payment Gateway) service provider.

However, CEO Soyoung Park says it was not easy from the beginning. When she founded the company, the online payment system was not known to the public. In fact, Pay Gate Japan founded in 2000 went through more difficulties because online payment was not known at all throughout Japan. She said, “People were wondering why they had to put their credit card information online”.

However, she had foresight. She used to work in the field of security. She founded the company with an idea. The Internet would make people exchange information and goods without meeting each other in person and this kind of exchange would blur the borders or boundaries of currency units. We will need an intermediary to help people use different currencies and methods of payment without a problem.

In the beginning, she just thought about payment solutions, technology, and development. Now the company has to perform financial duties dealing with a lot of money like banks. Thus, she feels responsible for what the company does as a money manager.

◆3 factors for success: technology, security, and feedback

The essential technology of Pay Gate includes the web standard method in No-popup and no-plugins and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) in customized payment UI

It has advantages that payment can be made in diverse devices including computer, smartphone, iPad, Galaxy Tab, Smart TV, PDA, etc. and payment services are available in all browsers including Chrome, Safari, Opera, Fire Fox, etc. CEO Soyoung Park said, “we are in the era of buying contents and shopping through televisions”. She also said, “the key to success is to cope with payment methods which are constantly changing”. This is why Pay Gate reacts to changing markets and presents diverse and new payment methods quicker than others.

The company puts a focus on security. Pay Gate provides diverse security authentication including AA (amount) authentication developed by Pay Gate, ISP, Visa 3D, and Anshim Click. Since 2008, they have renewed PCIDSS(Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), an international security authentication qualification, every year.

CEO Soyoung Park said, “We have focused on security and made a lot of efforts since the company was founded”. She showed her interest and confidence in security saying “it is principle that we compensate for customers’ damages if they were caused by Pay Gate”.

Since their service is to help cash flow, she believes no error is acceptable.

“Our principle is that 99.9% is X. Customers don’t accept an error of 0.01%. Playing silly games isn’t acceptable. 99.9% is X and 100% is O.”

◆Pay Gate ranges with Paypal and Alipay

Pay Gate has more than 8,000 domestic and foreign client companies. About 2,000 client companies receive funds through Pay Gate on a regular basis.

Pay Gate is the only domestic PG that has main business in global payment services. Pay Gate competes with Asia Pay, Paypal, and World Pay internationally.

The company plans to focus on the global market. CEO Soyoung Park says the Korean online payment market has been saturated for a long time.

She desires to grow her company like Paypal from the USA, Worldpay from the UK and Alipay from China.

CEO Soyoung Park said, “It is necessary to study diverse payment methods including mobile, bank, mobile communication, card, and electronic money for each country in order to earn a reputation like Paypal or Worldpay”. She also said, “We will present the latest payment trends and lead the global payment market”. Half of Pay Gate staff consists of foreigners. Many competent people from Vietnam, India, Japan, China, the USA, Korea, and France are working together for technology development and global marketing.

The company is currently reviewing the global mobile payment services for the next service. (the service provided by combining mobile payment services from mobile service providers in major countries)

This is what she is trying to grow as the top enterprise in the world.

◆Suggesting that advanced payment system is essential, and hoping to be a national mentor for electronic payment

She argues, “Korea should have commercialized easy and convenient payment methods like Amazon and Ebay”.

“Korea has the best Internet infrastructure in the world but the worst payment system. Foreigners can’t shop on Korean online shopping malls with their credit cards issued overseas. Koreans have been purchasing many products and services on Amazon and Ebay for a few years.” She said it is urgent to improve Korean payment system to an advanced one. This will happen with improved financial environment and the government interpretation related to electronic finance.

Also, she said “ongoing discussions about security with card companies and arguments about amount authentication should be dealt with in a broad view. This should based on a stable system but it is our task to provide customers with the best convenience”.

CEO Soyoung Park strongly said, “the government’s regulation reform and ongoing diverse debates will be beneficial to all of us from a long-term point of view.

She said, “Since interest in security is growing these days, I want to deliver basic knowledge about security to general customers”.

She also said, “I want to be a mentor to housewives and small enterprisers and on top of that, I would like to contribute to raise awareness of global electronic payment”.