Busan is good

Busan Metropolitan City to Implement “Dongbaekjeon Cashback Up to 10% (Monthly Cap: KRW 500,000)” Starting January Next Year

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that, to stimulate consumption within the city and increase sales for small business owners, it will apply a cashback rate of up to 10% for the local currency Dongbaekjeon from January to June next year (2026).

During the same period, the monthly cap for cashback applied to Dongbaekjeon will remain at KRW 500,000.

To boost domestic consumption, Busan Metropolitan City has expanded and operated the cashback rate and cap since January this year (2025) by investing a total of KRW 87 billion in municipal funds. In particular, since September, in line with expanded national government support, the city has raised the cashback rate to a maximum of 13% and has implemented a refund policy.

As a result, the total issuance amount from January to November this year reached KRW 1.56 trillion, an increase of approximately 26% compared to the same period last year (KRW 1.23 trillion), indicating that the policy has greatly contributed to stimulating consumption within the region.

Based on these outcomes, Busan Metropolitan City plans to operate the cashback policy stably next year (2026) as well, in order to sustain its consumption-boosting effects and strengthen support for small business owners.

In the meantime, concerns have been raised that frequent changes to the cashback policy—depending on the timing and scale of national government grants—could cause inconvenience to citizens and undermine trust in the policy.

In 2026, in accordance with the revision of the Act on the Promotion of the Use of Local Love Gift Certificates, which mandates national government support for the issuance of local love gift certificates, Busan Metropolitan City plans to apply a stable operational framework for Dongbaekjeon by maintaining the cashback rate at 10%.

Accordingly, for the first half of the year (January–June), the city will maintain the cashback rate at 10% and the monthly cashback cap at KRW 500,000. The operational policy for the second half (July–December) will be announced separately at a later date, after comprehensively reviewing issuance trends and fiscal conditions.

In particular, from January to June next year (2026), Busan Metropolitan City will apply a cashback rate of 10% and will differentiate the cashback rate by annual sales volume so that additional support can be provided to small-scale small business owners.

This continues the “differentiated by sales volume” policy that has been in effect since July 2023, with the aim of concentrating benefits on small-scale merchants, who account for 90% of all affiliated stores.

< Dongbaekjeon Cashback Rates by Annual Sales (January–June 2026) >

• ●Affiliated stores with annual sales of KRW 1 billion or less: 10%

• ●Affiliated stores with annual sales of KRW 1–3 billion: 8%

• ●Affiliated stores with annual sales exceeding KRW 3 billion: No cashback provided

In addition, a cashback rate of 10% will also be applied from January to June 2026 to the following services where Dongbaekjeon can be used: ▲Busan’s public delivery app for small business owners, “Ttaenggyeoyo” ▲the public taxi-hailing app “Dongbaek Taxi” ▲and the online local product mall “Dongbaek Mall.”

Mayor Park Heong-joon stated, “I hope this Dongbaekjeon cashback policy will help ease households’ financial burdens and lead to increased sales for alleyway commercial districts and small business owners, thereby providing tangible support for restoring the people’s economy,” adding, “Going forward, we will continue to provide support so that Dongbaekjeon can go beyond being merely a payment method and become established as a key policy instrument that drives a virtuous cycle in the local economy.”