🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Financial services are driving Kakao Pay’s growth

• Recent results fit a broader pattern. More of Kakao Pay’s growth now comes from more profitable financial products than from basic payment processing.
• In the third quarter of 2025, financial service revenue rose 72% from a year earlier. Investment service revenue jumped 155%, while insurance service revenue increased 72% 1.
• This approach is bringing people back to the app more often.
• Average transactions per user rose 43% year on year in the third quarter of 2025. That suggests people are using the app for investing and insurance as well as money transfers and purchases 1.

Kakao Pay’s results fit a broader move toward AI-powered app ecosystems

• Kakao Pay sits inside KakaoTalk, Kakao’s messaging app, giving it a built-in path to become a financial services hub across the wider platform.
• The company already uses AI in its ad business.
• It uses MyData-based targeting in advertising. MyData is a South Korean system that lets consumers control and share their financial data with service providers. Kakao Pay said its internal analytics found that MyData-based ads produced a 3x click-through rate, doubled conversion, and cut customer acquisition cost by 40% 2.
• Kakao Pay has also talked about new AI services and plans to link them with Kakao’s broader agentic AI work, which refers to AI systems that can take actions on a user’s behalf. The company has also discussed preparations tied to stablecoins 1.