Korea regulator says Naver breaches fair trade rules, shows only products purchased via Naver Pay

Nieuws Breedband Korea, republiek van 6 OCT 2020
Korea regulator says Naver breaches fair trade rules, shows only products purchased via Naver Pay
Naver has infringed South Korea’s fair trade law by limiting what a customer sees in search results to only what can be acquired with its payment system dubbed ‘Naver Pay’, The Korea Times reports, citing a statement from the National Assembly Research Service (NARS). The legislative research agency also said this case could be considered an abuse of monopoly power.

Naver’s local search engine is used by 74.7 percent of people cross South Korea. Currently, when a customer searches for a product on Naver, the system down not show products that can be purchased with other payment systems such as SSG Pay, Samsung Pay or Kakao Pay.

The NARS believes this is an unfair means of attracting customers from competitor platforms, and which hinders the users’ choice to pay with other companies' systems. 

Naver refused to comment on the matter.

Naver was recently investigated by the local antitrust watchdog for a similar case. The regulator alleged Naver positioned products that could be paid with its own payment system on the top page of the search results at its online shopping platform Naver Store Farm. Naver denied fixing search results, claiming its algorithm system was based on artificial intelligence, which showed the products randomly. The KFTC is yet to complete this investigation.

Back in September, Naver was fined KRW 1.03 billion for abuse of market dominance on its real estate service platform. It restricted its partner realtors from providing information to customers.

Categories:

Internet

Companies:

Samsung,  Kakao,  Naver

Countries:

Korea, republiek van

Tags:

Launch, Consumer

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