Samsung purchase perks flow to traditional markets as KOMSCO expands shared-growth platform

The Korea Minting, Security Printing and ID Card Operating Corporation is expanding a shared-growth model that channels consumer perks earned at large companies into spending at traditional markets and neighborhood commercial districts, using its Digital Onnuri Gift Certificate platform.

KOMSCO said Wednesday it will participate in Samsung Electronics' "Samsung Electronics Thanksgiving Festival with the People" event, through which cashback rewards for customers who purchase Samsung Electronics products will be issued as Digital Onnuri Gift Certificates. The arrangement is designed so that a major corporation's consumer promotion drives sales at traditional markets and local shopping streets — marking the first private-sector co-prosperity consumption model of its kind.

KOMSCO has previously run Onnuri Gift Certificate cashback programs with local governments, including Gwangju and Haenam-gun in South Jeolla Province, to build regional commerce revitalization models. It has also worked with the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business to issue Onnuri Gift Certificates to online enrollees in the Yellow Umbrella mutual aid fund, pursuing public-sector co-prosperity models. The new project extends that approach into the private sector.

KOMSCO will handle platform operations, including bulk issuance, transaction management and retrieval of the Digital Onnuri Gift Certificates. Eligible customers will receive the certificates and can spend them at Onnuri Gift Certificate-affiliated merchants nationwide, including traditional markets and shopping streets.

KOMSCO said the key feature of the project is that consumer benefits are designed to recirculate within the local economy rather than end as one-off promotions. Where conventional purchase perks stopped at a customer discount, rewards issued as Onnuri Gift Certificates get spent again at traditional markets and neighborhood shops — generating what the corporation calls an "nth-order effect of consumption support" that boosts sales for small business owners.

Digital Onnuri Gift Certificates are mobile-based, allowing issuance, use and management without physical handling, making them well suited to large-scale corporate promotions. Companies can run campaigns efficiently, while consumers receive their benefits without additional steps.

"This event is significant because it represents a new co-prosperity model in which consumer benefits from a large corporation flow into spending at traditional markets and neighborhood commercial districts," KOMSCO President Seong Chang-hun said. "Drawing on our experience operating the Digital Onnuri Gift Certificate platform, we will further strengthen our role as a public digital platform so that consumption support from both the public and private sectors can translate into revitalization of local economies."

KOMSCO plans to develop the Digital Onnuri Gift Certificate into a shared-growth platform that simultaneously delivers benefits to the public and revitalizes local economies, by linking it to a range of public-private partnership projects — including corporate promotions, consumer festivals, membership points and cashback programs.