Naver (035420.KS) is accelerating its push into the online used goods market by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to upgrade its services. The company aims to rapidly expand its influence in a market dominated by established players by combining robust security with a solid community ecosystem.
According to industry sources on Tuesday, Naver will sequentially update the features of "N Flea Market," its integrated used goods and safe trading service, within the year to expand its market share. N Flea Market is a revamped service that consolidates used goods transactions—previously fragmented across individual Naver Cafes—into a single integrated page.
Naver, currently a latecomer in the used goods market, is seeking a turnaround in the second half of this year by putting AI technology front and center. The key is the commerce integration of "Smart Lens," an AI-powered image search tool. When a seller photographs an item for sale with Smart Lens, the AI automatically analyzes and inputs information such as brand, model name, official launch price, and specifications. The strategy is to maximize user convenience by significantly reducing the cumbersome manual input procedures previously required when posting sales listings.
The company is also focusing on building safety nets to prevent the chronic problem of used goods transaction fraud. Naver operates a system that automatically detects keywords suspected of impersonation or hacking and alerts users. It also transparently provides information such as past transaction history, reviews, and Naver verification timestamps so users can assess the trustworthiness of their counterparts. In particular, the company has introduced a "Safe Trading Only" feature that allows transactions exclusively between users who have obtained a Naver certificate, eliminating fraud risk at the source. The payment and security systems of Team Naver, including Naver Pay, are utilized for this.
Naver is also reviewing the launch of "commerce-specialized spaces" that maximize the strengths of Naver Cafe. Rather than the existing simple text-based bulletin board format, the approach is to build a separate page within the Cafe—similar to "Smart Store," Naver's core shopping platform—where registered product images can be viewed at a glance. Given that Cafes bring together members with common denominators such as region, hobby, or background, analysts say this could become a differentiated specialty marketplace unique to Naver, going beyond simple consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions by combining commerce with community. A "lock-in effect," in which users drawn in through used goods trading naturally settle into Cafes that match their preferences, is also expected.
The reason Naver is driving so hard into the used goods market is to expand the scope of its core "commerce" business. According to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), Korea's used goods market has grown explosively from around 4 trillion won in 2008 to 43 trillion won last year. Given that the market has grown large enough to exceed 7% of the entire retail market, analysts say there is significant growth potential for Naver, even as a latecomer.
"This year, we will further activate our safe trading features while strengthening synergies with the Naver ecosystem, including not only Cafe but also integrated search and shopping," a Naver official said. "We will continue to upgrade the service into a safe and convenient next-generation peer-to-peer trading platform."
