The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has ordered the payment gateway (PG) industry to strengthen security measures following a recent surge in unauthorized online payments, such as those for ChatGPT paid memberships.

The FSS and the Korea Fintech Industry Association announced on July 15 that they have launched the "Online Fraudulent Payment Response Task Force," which includes major PG companies, as well as experts from academia and the security sector.

The task force aims to establish a system for preventing and responding to fraudulent payments to enhance industry security and consumer protection.

The task force will operate under two subcommittees: the Fraud Detection System (FDS) subcommittee and the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) subcommittee.

The plan is to diagnose vulnerabilities based on case studies from each sector by October and to establish "Standard Practical Guidelines for Preventing and Responding to Fraudulent Payments" within the second half of this year.

Lee Jong-oh, Assistant Governor for Digital and IT at the FSS, warned, "If PG companies focus solely on user convenience and profit expansion while neglecting fraudulent payment incidents, they will ultimately lose market trust."

Lee pointed out that "financial accidents have occurred because PG companies failed to block suspicious transactions that were not caught by the Fraud Detection Systems of financial institutions." He emphasized, "As an industry-wide integrated response is necessary, the FSS will maintain communication to ensure that the upcoming standard practical guidelines are harmoniously integrated with the regulatory framework."

Participating PG companies expressed their agreement, stating that they would actively cooperate in drafting the practical guidelines by sharing their respective experiences in detecting suspicious transactions and their response cases.