Kakao Pay "Considering PG and Overseas Company M&A... Launching Personal Pension Savings in November"

Kakao Pay has expressed its intention to acquire electronic payment gateway (PG) or overseas companies in terms of discovering new businesses and strengthening competitiveness.

On the 5th, Kakao Pay announced this plan during the Q3 earnings conference call this year. Hansunwook, Kakao Pay's Head of Operations, said, "We are reviewing various investment projects in terms of meaningful growth in the payment business and strengthening service competitiveness and technological capabilities. This includes M&A," adding, "We are actively considering investment opportunities that can expand into new or adjacent businesses beyond the payment business, and we are also open to the possibility of acquiring overseas companies."

At the end of last year, Kakao Pay acquired Paymint, an O2O payment solution company, and is currently conducting PMI (Post-Merger Integration). In addition, although it is a minority stake investment, it is strengthening offline payment synergy based on investment in OKPOS.

On the same day, Kakao Pay also announced the launch of personal pension savings. Park Jeongho, Kakao Pay's Head of Services, said, "We will launch personal pension savings this month and expand the investment product portfolio," adding, "Unlike the existing pension savings, which were complicated and difficult, we plan to provide services based on Kakao Pay's differentiated usability." Shin Wongeun, CEO of Kakao Pay, added, "The personal pension savings service to be launched this month is expected to contribute to revenue growth by strengthening new user inflow and existing user lock-in effects."

The company explained that Kakao Pay's user indicators are continuously improving. With the growth of the domestic and overseas offline payment markets, Kakao Pay plans to secure 5 million offline users this month. Initially, the point at which the number of offline users exceeded 5 million was expected to be next month, but it is expected to be achieved about a month earlier.

In addition, as user activity has strengthened, both weekly active users (WAU) and monthly active users (MAU) have significantly improved. Leader Park said, "Currently, WAU has increased by 86% compared to the same period last year and by 14% compared to the previous quarter, and as of last month, MAU has grown by 41% and 18%, respectively."