Users of various mobile payment apps in South Korea in 2020, with forecasts to 2025
Kakao Story was almost as popular as Instagram in South Korea in 2020, for example. In a similar fashion, Naver Pay is built around South Korea's most popular search engine. This integration into a much bigger ecosystem could potentially explain the high popularity of both Kakao Pay and Naver Pay against other mobile payments such as Samsung Pay that were available in South Korea in December 2020.
Similar to WeChat in China, the client base of the mobile wallet within South Korean messaging app Ka(kao)Talk is said to grow by millions between 2020 and 2025. This payment option, Kakao Pay, shares characteristics with China's WeChat and Japan's LINE in that it is part of an all-in-one app ecosystem that originally started out as an instant messaging service. Kakao combines multiple different apps into a single place, combining messaging with conference calls, but also with music, online banking, payments, hotel reservations or social media: