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When ordering coffee at Starbucks, many people pay with money pre-loaded in the app.

Starbucks received more than 340 billion won from this prepaid charge last year alone, and the company can use this huge amount of money without any restrictions, and there is no device to protect the customer. .



Reporter Im Tae-woo reports.



<Reporter>



Quite a few Starbucks customers pay with the money previously charged in the smartphone app instead of a credit card.



[Starbucks employee: Can you upload a Starbucks card only once?]



[Jiyoon Kim/Customer: They give you free coupons on your birthday, etc. There are things like free coupons, so I think I have to recharge them and use them.]



Prepaid cards or coupons The number of people giving and receiving gifts is also increasing.



In this way, the amount of prepaid reloading by customers exceeded 100 billion won four years ago, and reached 340 billion won last year, which has tripled in three years.



It is equivalent to the size of a one-year savings bank and is similar to Kakao Pay, a leading fintech player.



From the point of view of Starbucks, it is equivalent to spending 340 billion won interest-free, but it is being used for various businesses such as opening a store in a good location.



It is the same money that the customer puts aside for a while, but unlike a bank or fintech, it can be used at will.



After the Merge Point incident last year, the law was strengthened to leave more than half of the prepaid deposit to an external institution, but Starbucks was excluded from the application because it is not a financial company.



There is no mechanism to guarantee the principal if you lose money or fall into financial difficulties.



[Lee Seong-hoon/Professor, Sejong University Graduate School of Business: There is no company with zero risk, and when an unexpected second merge point event may occur?

To prevent that, wouldn't it be necessary to have a policy to protect customer assets, the reserves?

.]



Starbucks has taken a step back from customers forgot to use the unused charging money within 5 years of the validity period, but in the future, it has taken a step back to allow it to be used indefinitely.



(Video editing: Nam Il, VJ: Park Hyun-woo)