Toss Bank
“Can a super-app-distributed internet-only bank become Korea's default financial OS by winning the underserved (SOHO, foreigners, vulnerable borrowers) the incumbents ignore?”
Toss Bank is the chartered-bank arm of Viva Republica, which began in 2014 as a P2P money transfer app to fix Korea's notoriously broken bank-transfer UX. After the super-app (~25M users) matured into lending, brokerage, and insurance, Viva Republica pursued and won South Korea's third internet-only bank license, launching Toss Bank in October 2021. The strategy is distribution-led: the Toss super-app funnels users into Toss Bank deposits, loans, FX, and cards, while Toss Bank focuses on inclusive finance — non-face-to-face SOHO/sole-proprietor lending, foreigner onboarding via AI ID verification, and the SOHO Score being licensed out to other lenders.