South Korea‘s first mobile-only lender K bank has secured some 650,000 new users over the past five months as it showed signs of business normalization after it resumed its lending business in July, the company said Thursday.

The news brought K bank’s accumulated number of bank accounts to over 2 million as of Wednesday, according to the company, which was founded in 2017.

From July to November, K bank is estimated to have attracted an average of 130,000 new users each month, which stands in stark contrast to the average from January to June of 25,000 new users.

During the cited period, K bank’s loan balance increased by 1.45 trillion won ($1.32 billion). The mobile-only lender‘s total assets jumped 60 percent to 3.3 trillion won in the third quarter.

This comes as the commercial bank without brick-and-mortar branches resumed its lending business, by raising 396.6 billion won equity capital from shareholders including BC Card, Woori Bank and NH Investment & Securities. Before the fundraising, K bank‘s loan business had effectively been ground to a halt since April 2019.

Since then, K bank has come up with loan products including consumer credits and overdraft accounts, targeting homebuyers and retail stock investors, among others.

Korea is home to two mobile-only banks: K bank and Kakao Bank.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)