Kakao Bank partners with Hyundai Green Food to launch small savings products

Kakao Bank partnered with Hyundai Green Food to launch a new product that combines small-amount savings with partner discounts. Based on the feature of automatically accumulating everyday spare change, the product adds discount benefits from the Greeting health food mall, with the goal of both cultivating savings habits and offering shopping discounts.

On May 7, Kakao Bank announced the release of the 11th product in its brand savings jar series—“Savings Jar with Greeting.” The brand savings jar’s structure is as follows: it automatically accumulates spare change less than 1,000 won in the deposit and withdrawal account, with a maximum savings amount of 100,000 won, and on top of that it stacks partner discounts. This can be seen as a collaboration reflecting a trend in the banking industry to go beyond simply selling deposits and to create products that are tied to everyday services.

The product’s distinguishing feature is that it includes discounts that can be used in Hyundai Green Food’s health food mall Greeting. The application period runs from May 7 to June 3. Users can receive coupons related to food purchases while saving, which has also been interpreted as an example of lowering the boundary between financial services and distribution services.

The savings method is also relatively simple. After setting up the automatic accumulation function, artificial intelligence will predict the balance level for the coming week. From early Saturday morning, it will additionally save an amount ranging from 1,000 won to 10,000 won. This method is not about depositing a large sum at once; instead, it accumulates small amounts in installments. Its focus is to reduce the burden of saving and encourage users to keep using it. The reason internet-only banks are pushing this type of automation feature also aligns with a strategy to expand customer touchpoints by improving convenience and increasing participation frequency.

Customers who join the product can receive up to three tiers of benefits based on the number of times and total amount of savings accumulated as of June 10, including a 100 won coupon for honey yellow crispy fried chicken and discount coupons for the Greeting mall. The financial industry believes that in an environment where it is difficult to achieve differentiation using interest rates alone, this kind of collaborative savings product is being used as a way to increase consumers’ perceived value of the actual benefits. In the future, this trend may lead to more diversified collaborations among banks, distribution companies, and platform companies.