Contactless services have also gone mainstream in the second-hand car market with used car dealers increasingly adopting mobile technology to offer credible information on used cars.

Joining in on the trend, auto financing firm Hyundai Capital launched an artificial intelligence-powered mobile platform in September last year, which helps consumers avoid low-quality used cars -- often called lemons and picked peaches -- in their recommendations.

The used car mobile platform, named Check, has been gaining popularity among consumers who want to buy affordable, quality used cars without being scammed, the company said.

Since the launch, the average monthly page views on the platform surpassed 120,000 in the past five months, according to the financial firm. By just typing in a vehicle’s registration number, consumers can find a fair price, as well as recent sale prices of the same vehicle model, and listings of used cars with similar conditions.

The platform is the first of its kind to be equipped with the AI system to set market prices of second-hand cars. Its algorithm to price used cars was developed jointly with a team of researchers at Seoul National University. It automatically assesses the value of used cars based on the production year, mileage, engine displacement and accident records. The AI-powered service continuously gets updated with used car prices from online bids.

Some 300,000 used cars are put up for sale on the platform every month while Check also informs subscribers what the expected selling prices of used cars would be in the next three years, as well as help its users find and apply for loan programs when buying cars.

“Check is designed to help address pain points of consumers who can easily fall victim to used car scams due to the lack of reliable market data, and give used car buyers easy access to automotive financing products,” said An Dong-chan, a vice president at the auto-financing firm.

In 2020, some 3.95 million second-hand cars were registered in Korea, up 7 percent from a year earlier, according to Carisyou, one of the nation’s most used car portal. The used car market is even larger than the new car sales market in the US and Germany. The second-hand car market is twice the size of the new car sales market in both nations.

Around 40.8 million and 7.3 million units were up for sale in the US and Germany in 2020, respectively. The new car sales in the US reached 17 million last year, while Germany posted 3.6 million.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)