Coupang users quietly return as prepaid balances rise for third straight quarter

Jung, an office worker in their 30s on parental leave, has recently started topping up a Coupang account again. Jung had canceled a Coupang membership after the company's personal data breach and briefly switched to rival e-commerce platforms, but ultimately returned to Coupang's Rocket Delivery service for childcare needs. "Baby products are often urgently needed, and Coupang has more items and faster delivery than anywhere else — I have no choice but to use it," Jung said. "The data leak and how they handled it afterward were disappointing, but there's no real alternative."

Coupang Pay's prepaid balance, which plunged after the personal data breach, is rising again. It has grown for three consecutive quarters this year, approaching pre-breach levels. Key metrics including monthly active users, new app installations and payment volumes are also recovering, suggesting the fallout from the mass exodus of users — dubbed "de-Coupanging" — is gradually fading.

Coupang Pay's prepaid balance stood at about 119.4 billion won ($89.4 million) at the end of the third quarter, according to industry data released Tuesday. That is up about 4.5 billion won, or 3.9 percent, from 115 billion won in the second quarter. It remains 3.3 percent below the 123.6 billion won recorded in the third quarter of last year, just before the data breach, but has nearly recovered to that level.

Prepaid balances represent funds that users deposit in advance on a platform. They are closely tied to a "lock-in effect" that keeps customers engaged and serve as a gauge of loyal users. Coupang Pay's prepaid balance hit a record high of about 123.6 billion won in the third quarter of last year before plunging by 11.3 billion won, or 9.1 percent, in the fourth quarter — its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2023, when it stood at 109.8 billion won.

This year, the balance has grown for three straight quarters. Compared with the end of last year, it has risen about 7.2 billion won, or 6.4 percent, over nine months. The quarter-on-quarter growth rate accelerated to 3.9 percent in the third quarter, up from 2.3 percent in the first quarter and 0.2 percent in the second.

App users and payment volumes are also rebounding. According to IGAWorks' Mobile Index, Coupang's monthly active users reached about 35.65 million last month, up 4.4 percent from a year earlier. The figure had slipped from 34.38 million in October last year — just before the data breach — to 33.64 million in February, then bounced back by about 1.39 million, or 4.1 percent, in March. The user base now exceeds pre-breach levels.

Estimated credit and debit card payments on Coupang last month also rose 3.9 percent year-on-year to 4.85 trillion won. The figure had fallen from 4.44 trillion won in October last year to 4.02 trillion won in February before recovering. In July, it surpassed the 5 trillion won mark, reaching 5.09 trillion won.

The return of former users — a trend dubbed "re-Coupanging" — has also been notable. According to Coupang Inc.'s second-quarter earnings released in August, the number of active customers in its product commerce segment reached 24.7 million, up 800,000 from 23.9 million the previous quarter. While the figure had dipped from 24.6 million in the fourth quarter of last year to 23.9 million in the first quarter of this year, it has since recovered to match the level seen in the third quarter of last year, before the data breach. The number of Wow membership subscribers — the company's paid membership tier and core customer base — has also surpassed pre-breach levels.

The recovery is largely attributed to the return of loyal customers who had grown deeply dependent on Coupang through its Rocket Delivery, dawn delivery and integrated Wow membership services. While some consumers moved to abandon Coupang immediately after the breach, many found it difficult in practice to break away from the platform given how embedded it had become in their daily shopping habits.

Many users who switched to rival platforms after the breach have since returned to Coupang. According to IGAWorks' Mobile Index e-commerce report for September, about 2.31 million users — 25.5 percent of those who used Naver Plus Store in August — stopped using it in September. Of those, about 1.7 million, or 73.7 percent, turned to the Coupang app. By contrast, only about 120,000 users left Coupang for Naver Plus Store.

Coupang's app revisit rate — the share of users who return to the app after installing it — rose to 74.7 percent, up 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier. Naver Plus Store's revisit rate fell 15.0 percentage points over the same period, from 58.6 percent to 43.6 percent.

Even as usage metrics recover, profitability remains a challenge. Coupang Inc. posted second-quarter sales of $8.86 billion, up 4 percent year-on-year, but swung to an operating loss of $556 million, equivalent to about 835 billion won. Even excluding the fine imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission, the company recorded an adjusted operating loss of $146 million, or about 219 billion won.

Legal disputes and questions of accountability stemming from the data breach are also ongoing. At the National Assembly's national audit of the political affairs committee on Monday, lawmakers raised Coupang's refusal to accept a mediated compensation proposal for data breach victims and its non-compliance with an on-site investigation by the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Earlier, on Oct. 7, Coupang filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Administrative Court seeking to overturn the 624.7 billion won fine imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission.