KFTC Investigates Food Delivery, Accommodation, and Open Market Platforms... Probing New Types of Unfair Practices Against Partner Businesses

Gathering Damage Cases to Serve as Foundation for Future Policy Reform

Investigating Emerging Types, Including "Blocking Data Access"

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) is launching a fact-finding investigation targeting unfair trade practices between platforms and partner businesses in three key sectors: food delivery, open markets, and accommodations.

According to industry sources on July 25, the KFTC plans to soon begin a survey of major platforms and their partner businesses within the food delivery, open market, and accommodation industries. As digital transformation rapidly accelerates, major online platforms have experienced dramatic growth. However, issues such as unfair practices and abuses of power toward partner businesses persist. The KFTC has determined that a systematic investigation into the current state of transactions and operational policies within these markets is necessary in order to objectively assess the extent of damages suffered by partner businesses.

Food delivery, open markets, and accommodations are sectors where small businesses are highly dependent on platforms, and complaints and disputes are concentrated. The previous methods of attracting customers—through independent websites or telephone reservations—have been consolidated into platform-based approaches, which has exposed businesses to unilateral changes in platform policies or unfair demands. The KFTC will examine platform fee structures, the timing and methods of payment settlement, and operational policies relating to refunds and service suspensions. In addition, the effectiveness of dispute resolution and communication systems—for processing complaints or resolving issues when disagreements arise between platforms and partner businesses—will be analyzed in depth to determine how well they operate in practice.

At the same time, the KFTC will collect feedback directly from businesses on the ground. The core focus is to identify specific cases and emerging types of unfair practices resulting from unilateral platform policies on issues such as refunds, settlements, service suspensions, and geographic restrictions, as well as to discover concrete evidence of new types of unfair practices. One of the most frequently cited new examples involves platforms strengthening their market dominance by refusing to share or controlling partner access to customer and transaction data.

The KFTC plans to conduct comprehensive surveys of both platforms and partner businesses as part of the related research project. Precise analysis will be conducted based on the survey data collected. The objective data gathered from the investigation will serve as foundational material for policy improvements to establish fair trade practices between platforms and their partner businesses in the future. A KFTC official stated, "In addition to previously known abuses of power, we will pay special attention to newly emerging unfair practices such as blocking data access altogether. Through these fact-finding investigations, we intend to identify real-world cases of damage and use them as a stepping stone for institutional reform to establish fair business practices."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.