‘Yeo-reum’, Please Do Something with My Card Debt
‘Yeo-reum’, Please Do Something with My Card Debt
  • By Kim In-wook (info@koreaittimes.com)
  • 승인 2016.02.12 15:11
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“I ran short on my card debt this month. Why does it seem like I never have enough I feel so desperate.” It is not unusual to hear comments such as these at the workplace and elsewhere nowadays.

In fact, I have had a similar experience myself. Loans, car payments in installments and premiums can all mount up. After paying all these off, I often find I have little left in terms of disposable finance.

I often refer to my salary as “cyber money”, as it seems to erode away so quickly.

Look around you and you too will likely find plenty of others in a similar boat, struggling to pay off their hard-to-manage card debts.

Some say that the trick is to keep track of your spending by making records of your incoming and outgoings, but things is not always as easy as that.

It is perhaps with people such as myself in mind that the makers of SKT's Yeo-reum app have designed their new service.

Incredibly for some, this powerful app has the ability to accurately calculate all card expenses – a lifeline for those who struggle with such issues.

For many smartphone users, though, traditional text messaging has become a thing of the past, with free services like Kakao Talk now becoming increasingly popular. Skeptics may therefore express a certain degree of suspicion about a card messaging service such as this.

However, SKT insists that their new app is the real deal, and that its multifaceted functions could bring about real change for card users who have trouble staying on top of their finances.

In fact, even the app's name has multiple meanings. Yeo-reum means "to open" (as in "to open a message") in Korean. However, it also means summer. The app's makers want users to see it as a gateway into a whole joyful and bright new world of text messaging and information access.

It is designed with the aim of overcoming the traditional limits of messages, which often only deal with text and image short-cuts.

Lengthy discussions led the developers to the conclusion that customers would better respond to a card, home-delivery service and shopping area, one where the demand of text users was anticipated to be very high. This was in the hope of allowing text users to be able to understand information at a glance, a need anticipated particularly within the 20-50 age group demographic.

Users in this age group, the developers found, are more likely to inquire about how much they have spent and the status of orders they have made online.

However, such users said they were strongly averse to voice calls informing them of the above, considering them as something akin to spam.

Armed with this knowledge, the developers tried to create functions that could accommodate such needs. That is why Yeo-reum is separated into different categories, which include text messages, card information, home-delivery service notifications and a spam folder. Users can also create their own custom-made categories.

In the card category, received texts are organized by the card issuer, rather than by the time they were received only. Importantly, monthly total payment information is displayed at on the very top of the screen for ease of understanding.

Once they have selected the card issuer they wish to view, users can take a look at their card expenditure history, a collection of all of the text-message alerts they have received from that particular sender. In the home-delivery service category, users can see items they have purchased online and get progress reports on the delivery process. Further details are available via the online market and courier sections. The spam category also allows users to clean up their inboxes, filtering spam-suspicious texts, such as unsolicited advertisements, into a single folder. It also gives users the option to block a sender completely or delete all messages from a selected number.

Some users have said they found the card and home-delivery categorizing very convenient. However, others have complained that the subdivision services have been rather disappointing in comparison. Particularly, they noted that certain texts, such as those referring to card payment approvals or call-keeper services were incorrectly classified as spam.

The developers, however, say they are working on ironing out such bugs to improve the quality of the service. Spam classification algorithm settings, they say, are composed of a blend of SKT’s own classification filters and user feedbacks. As Yeo-reum user numbers increase, more advanced algorithms will be put in place in order to expand and improve spam classification settings. Simply put, things are about to get a whole lot better for Yeo-reum users.

The fact that apps like Kakao Talk were perceived by users to be free was the key factor that led chat apps’ assault on the territory traditionally claimed by text messaging.

This leads one to question just why the Yeo-reum developers decided against the free chatting app route, and instead decided to develop its “life planner” text message function.

The app’s masterminds explain that in the long run, text messaging options actually work out cheaper for smartphone users as it involves almost nothing in the terms of “burden of charge” for text message receivers.

Although many people call Kakao Talk and its competitors “free” services, strictly speaking they really are not free at all. Unless they are using free Wi-Fi only, users need to pay for data charges, either in the form of flat-rate bills, Wi-Fi bills or pay-as-you-go data fees.

This led SKT to reject the idea of creating a similar “free” or “low-cost” chat messaging style app. As for most end-users, financial service text message typically usage takes the form of received messages, rather than sent texts, the makers decided to stick with their initial project plan, namely the “optimization of information receiving through text messages”. This has manifested itself in what SKT is calling the “life planner”.

Manageability is another key factor the app’s makers had in mind. Indeed, developers say, “Text messaging is primarily based on personal networks that exist between family and friends. That means it can often be inconvenient and intrusive when it comes to communicating with people you are not fully acquainted with.”

Indeed, it can be distracting to have to add phone numbers and manage business contacts, or the contacts you only need to deal with one one-off occasions. In fact, many people are concerned that they are already exposing too much information to such parties, something that really hinders text message users.

That, says SKT, is where Yeo-reum comes in.

Detractors say that power consumption is a potential issue, but SKT representatives also say they are aware of this, and are currently taking steps to rectify the situation.

A SKT spokesperson explains, “The goal with Yeo-reum is to create a solution that replaces existing text message apps altogether. As a result, we have put much time and effort into the planning and developing phases.”

The representative adds, “We released the app only after rigorous testing, so we felt sure that there were no problems with the running speed or power usage. That said, a certain amount of power and data usage is unavoidable as the app needs to work in association with existing text message systems.”

The company has big plans for its new service. SKT says it would like to appeal to customers on the basis of the app’s unique qualities.

Developers say it is incredibly competitive in terms of quality, function and design. The challenge now is to get people to give Yeo-reum a go, and to really try it out for themselves.

The spokesperson notes, “We are trying to consolidate our customer base by enhancing the app’s intrinsic competitiveness. We want to start a two-way dialog with real users, and we also hope to reach out to people using SKT’s existing channels.”


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