Number of Kakao Bank users South Korea 2017-2023

As of Q1 2023, there were around 21.2 million users of Kakao Bank, up from around 12.4 million in Q4 2019. With the growing popularity of mobile banking in South Korea, Kakao Bank attracted over 12 million customers within just two years of starting operations in July 2017. Now it has become one of the leading digital banks in Asia.

Digital banks in South Korea

Kakao Bank, a subsidiary of Kakao Corp., was established in 2016 and received its banking license in April 2017. It was the second digital bank in South Korea after K Bank, which had launched its services a few months earlier. These digital banks, also known as internet-only banks or neobanks, have no physical branches and operate only through digital channels.

The rise of Kakao Bank

Kakao Bank quickly gained popularity not only because of the already well-known mobile messaging app Kakao Talk, but also because of the convenient services and products it offered. With the growing popularity of Kakao Bank, total assets and net income have increased dramatically over the past four years.