South Korea’s SK Group will adopt blockchain in its digital marketing. Its OK Cashbag loyalty program and Syrup consumer mobile app will be linked to blockchain.

Internet platform development company SK Planet, the subsidiary of SK Telecom,  has signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday with the public blockchain project, the ICON Foundation.

SK Planet will use blockchain technology in providing its mobile service, including its loyalty program SK  Cashbag and Syrup. Through the partnership, it will adopt blockchain in its core business services, including e-commerce, online-to-offline services, and digital marketing.

SK Planet said the blockchain would innovate the platform of digital marketing and upgrade the current Internet-based centralized customer services. The two companies will also join hands in creating a blockchain-based ecosystem for small companies and traditional markets.

SK Planet owns and operates an e-commerce shopping site, 1st.co.kr. It is an online marketplace where buyers and sellers can meet.

It also operates OK Cashbag, South Korea’s most popular loyalty program where customers can earn points across a variety of retailers and redeem these points for goods, services, and discounts with over 60,000 merchants.

Through its Syrup brand, it runs multiple consumer mobile apps for online-to-offline services. It runs Korea’s first mobile voucher service, Gifticon. The other services include mobile wallet Syrup Wallet, a mobile app for food and restaurants Syrup Table, a  fashion app Syrup Style, a web-based payment solution Syrup Pay.

What is the ICON Project?

According to its White Paper, ICON Project is to connect all public and private entities through blockchain.  It seeks to build a decentralized network, allowing independent blockchains with difference governances to trade with one another without any intermediaries. Anyone can create a new blockchain project and join the network. A new blockchain project is free to connect with existing projects and create new unique worlds, or blockchain multiverse. ICON itself can be viewed as both a living organism and an ecosystem.
ICON is a vision with a proven track record and has progressed beyond the initial concept stage. ICON
already boasts communities comprised of reputable institutions – banks, securities, insurance, hospitals,
universities, and more. A future with faster money remittance and frictionless value exchange of
securities, medical records, academic data, insurance fees is within our reach.
It said ICON seeks to build a world of true hyperconnectivity.