North Koreans can use both bank cards and bank transfers to buy goods on a popular mobile e-commerce app used to purchase items from foreign currency shops nationwide.
A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Tuesday that to purchase items with the app, a user needs a bank card in their own name, a mobile phone and a mobile phone number.
“You make electronic payments using a pre-registered card after the app verifies your ID and password,” he said.
When making e-payments, North Korean authorities verify whether the phone number and name on the bank card match the information stored on the app.
The authorities check the phone number because North Koreans sometimes illegally sell their mobile phones, along with the phone numbers attached to them. Because the registered name on the phone and the actual owner sometimes differ, North Korean authorities impose ID verifications that check the registered owner of the phone number, too.
App users must reportedly make their purchases in foreign currency only, just as they would at the brick-and-mortar shops.
“You can register on the app various foreign currency cards issued by the Central Bank and regional commercial banks,” said the source. “People who haven’t registered a card can buy things with bank transfers.”
This means even if a user has no separately issued foreign currency card, they can buy goods by depositing money in the foreign currency shops’ bank accounts, as long as they have a foreign currency account in their own name.
“If you send money to the foreign currency shop’s foreign currency account, you get a text message within a minute saying the payment has been completed,” said the source. “Everyone was amazed at first at such a rare thing, though they also worried about getting scammed.”
This is to say, North Koreans — highly distrustful of the country’s public financial system — were at first hesitant to buy goods using mobile payments or bank transfers.
“In particular, people in provincial areas were so amazed they bought the cheapest thing there just to see what happened,” said the source. “When people in Yanggang Province bought goods from a foreign currency shop in Pyongyang on their mobile phones, the items arrived within a week, packaged with the specific name of the shop, delivered via private buses from Pyongyang to Hamhung to Hyesan. Now people don’t worry about getting scammed.”
In fact, North Koreans express surprise and contentment that they can receive items from Pyongyang foreign currency shops within a week, exclaiming that “this is the first time in their lives that they have felt the state so thoroughly earning the individual’s trust.”
“When you buy goods from Pyongyang in the provinces, the app gives you the total price by automatically calculating the shipping cost,” the source said, adding, “People have no complaints about this. They can conveniently receive goods where they are, so naturally they don’t mind paying shipping based on the distance.”
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