Logos of Korea’s Kakao Pay and Japan’s PayPay
Kakao Pay and Japan’s PayPay have expanded their partnership, enabling Japanese PayPay users to make offline payments at more than 2 million merchants across Korea.
The South Korean online payments company said Thursday that PayPay’s network is now connected to Korean offline stores, allowing Japanese travelers to pay as they would at home.
This marks PayPay’s first overseas expansion. The company is one of Japan’s largest cashless payment providers, with over 70 million registered users. Japan is Korea’s second-largest source of visitors, after China, with 1.92 million Japanese tourists visiting Korea between January and July.
The service was made possible through a three-way partnership between Kakao Pay, PayPay and Alipay+. It follows Kakao Pay’s own outbound expansion in November 2024, when Korean tourists gained the ability to use Kakao Pay for offline payments in Japan via PayPay’s local network.
Kakao Pay, the fintech arm of IT giant Kakao, is the only Korean company connecting foreign payment networks to offline merchants in Korea. Before PayPay, it linked Vietnam’s ZaloPay, Pakistan’s NayaPay and Uzbekistan’s Humo to Korean stores. On Monday, it also introduced NFC (near-field communication) payments, broadening outbound payment options for Korean users in the US, Europe and Oceania.
“With Japan’s No. 1 mobile payment provider PayPay launching in Korea, the largest number of people in the two countries can now use their home payment services when traveling,” Kakao Pay said. “This milestone reflects the strong partnership Kakao Pay has built since making its first overseas expansion in Japan in 2019, and we will keep enhancing cross-border convenience and benefits for travelers between the two countries.”
jwc@heraldcorp.com
AloJapan.com