전자금융거래법의 개정안과 소비자보호 이슈 -머지포인트 사태의 시사점을 중심으로-

Due to the IT technology innovation, the market share of electronic prepayment means is rapidly increasing year after year along with the expansion of the simple payment market in Korea. As the issuance scale of electronic prepayment means and the number of users is soaring, management of issuers of electronic prepayment means has become more necessary. For instance, despite the drastic service reduction of the so-called ‘Mergepoint’(hereinafter, Mergepoint incident) in August 2021, many Mergepoint users have not been able to get their prepaid recharges back. Naturally, this Mergepoint incident has sparked a discussion for revision of the current Korean Electronic Financial Transaction Act (hereinafter, EFTA) which does not reflect recent technological innovation. It is necessary to revise the EFTA by supplementing the weaknesses revealed in the Mergepoint incident, and this paper focuses on some legal issues surrounding the revision of the EFTA to prevent recurrence of the similar incidents. First of all, it is inevitable to expand the current legal definition for electronic prepayment means thereby making more electronic financial business providers registered. Furthermore, with respect to selling subscription-type products like the MergePlus, to consider it as simply operating an electronic payment settlement agency service. As seen in MergePlus case, if monetary value is ‘presented’ to a subscription-type product and that value is ‘linked’ to monetary compensation such as points exchangeable for goods, user protection devices should be given to such kind of product. In addition, as overall devices for maintaining trust in the electronic financial business industry, duty to deposit the users’ prepaid charge separately outside the electronic financial company is needed, and along with this, such prepaid charge deposit should be managed as safe assets with high liquidity. In addition, as some bills of EFTA promote the introduction, if the sales agencies such as online platforms are properly imposed on joint responsibility for the duty to refund the balance of the electronic prepayment means, it would be better to protect users. Under the current EFTA, the scope of the electronic prepayment means is not comprehensive enough as this Act incorporates criteria such as ‘industry’ standards, and the registration exemptions based on the issue balance are also somewhat unreasonable because the balance is relatively easy to manipulate. Considering the above problems, it is necessary to improve the current overall regulatory system under the current EFTA.