Toss Payments has opened a closed pilot that offers merchant cash advances to Coupang marketplace sellers who already settle card and wallet receipts through its payout APIs, according to merchants invited this month and a briefing slide seen by InfoHandle Network. Repayments skim a fixed share of daily settlement batches, a structure Toss engineers say reuses ledger controls built for marketplaces—not a new consumer lending app.
Why the pilot appeared now
Coupang Financial suspended its Seller Growth Loan in late 2025 after regulators questioned 18.9 percent annual rates and automatic deductions from marketplace settlements. Thousands of small merchants still need short-term inventory cash ahead of Chuseok and year-end campaigns, but bank lines often want collateral these sellers do not have.
Toss positions itself as a neutral payment rail: it already registers sellers, runs know-your-customer checks, and caps weekly payouts until identities clear. Advances extend that ledger with a separate liability flag rather than a standalone credit card.
Eligibility and limits
Invite-only merchants needed twelve months of Toss-routed Coupang settlements, chargeback rates below one percent, and average weekly inflows above eight million won. Initial advances top out at thirty million won—lower than Coupang's fifty-million ceiling—with factor rates quoted in the high teens on an annualized basis depending on category risk.
Merchants in home goods and baby products were over-represented in the first cohort because their inventory cycles are shortest; electronics sellers were excluded until return-rate models mature.
How repayment rides settlements
Each morning Toss splits incoming Coupang payouts into three buckets: mandatory advance recovery, scheduled marketplace fees, and free cash to the seller wallet. Recovery percentages float between eight and fifteen percent of gross inflows until the advance plus fee clears, mimicking merchant cash advance mechanics common in U.S. payment firms but rare in Korea's PG-licensed ecosystem.
If settlements pause—for example during a platform outage—contracts freeze new marketing spend limits inside the Toss Business dashboard rather than triggering instant defaults, a concession merchants demanded after watching Coupang's harder collection language.
Regulatory framing
Toss Payments holds payment gateway registration; it is not marketing the product as a bank loan. Legal counsel labeled the instrument "receivables purchase" in invite letters, though Financial Supervisory Service staff have not commented publicly on the pilot. Industry lawyers expect scrutiny if advances scale without a lending license partner.
Toss said it shares advance performance data with its banking partners for liquidity backstops but keeps underwriting models in-house, trained on anonymized settlement velocity rather than personal credit scores.
Merchant reactions
Two invited sellers in Gyeonggi said they accepted ten-million-won advances to stock thermos inventory before a chilly September spell. Both cited faster funding—funds arrived within one business day—compared with waiting on Coupang's suspended loan queue.
A merchants' association chat room nonetheless warned that stacking Toss advances atop card receivable loans could trap sellers in layered deductions, especially if Coupang lengthens settlement cycles again.
Competitive responses
Naver Pay and Kakao Pay operate seller tools but have not announced Coupang-specific advances. Banks such as Shinhan pitch traditional working-capital lines with manual underwriting turnaround measured in weeks.
If Toss proves loss rates stay below three percent annualized on the pilot pool, it could open APIs for other marketplaces that route settlements through the same payout stack, though executives cautioned that each platform's chargeback rules need separate models.
Data and privacy
Underwriting reads only Toss-visible settlement streams, not Coupang seller center passwords. Merchants grant read access via OAuth-style consent inside the Toss Business app, revocable unless an advance remains outstanding.
Toss declined to say whether Coupang corporate was consulted; Coupang did not answer InfoHandle Network requests before publication.
What success looks like by November
Internal targets include ninety-five percent on-time recovery without manual collections calls and no FSS inquiries. If those hold, Toss may widen invites to Woowa Brothers merchants who share the same payout rails—another population hurt when quick inventory loans disappeared from the market.
Pilot merchants receive a single-page fee schedule in Korean listing factor rates, recovery caps, and a hotline to Toss compliance if Coupang settlement delays exceed forty-eight hours. The sheet also states that early payoff does not reduce the contracted factor fee.