South Korea’s largest portal Naver and fintech company Toss are escalating a dispute over reward-based search marketing and access to merchant data. Naver filed a criminal complaint with the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency in February, alleging that Toss’s attendance-check mission induces users to search specific keywords and distorts results. The mission asks users to find and verify information on Naver, such as restaurant prices or walking distances, then enter it in the Toss app for five points, roughly five Korean won. Toss declined to halt the campaign and requested evidence of traffic distortion, prompting Naver to allege business obstruction and violations of the Information and Communications Network Act. Toss Place is considering a complaint to the Korea Fair Trade Commission over Naver’s exclusion of Toss POS from Place Plus, which connects store payment and ordering data with Naver Smart Place. The conflict also involves the broader strategic value of offline payments and POS data: in-person payments averaged 1.786 trillion Korean won per day in 2024, while Toss Place reported more than 400,000 merchant locations as of August. Small-business groups have urged Toss to stop the reward campaign, warning that manipulated searches could reduce the exposure of merchants relying on genuine reviews and demand.