South Korean KakaoPay Allegedly Provided User Info to Alipay Without Consent

TapTechNews August 13th news, according to Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean Financial Supervisory Service said today that the South Korean mobile payment service provider KakaoPay has provided 54.2 billion pieces of personal credit information of 40 million users to Alipay without the consent of users for nearly six years.

In the on-site inspection of overseas payment business conducted on KaKaoPay by the Financial Supervisory Service, it was found that since April 2018, KakaoPay has provided personal credit information to Alipay once a day. This information includes users' Kakao accounts, mobile phone numbers, e-mails, KakaoPay account information, as well as bank account balances, recharges, withdrawals, bills, transfer details and other payment-related information.

TapTechNews noted that according to the cooperation content between KakaoPay and Alipay, KakaoPay users can use KakaoPay for payment in 81 million online and offline stores in 46 countries and regions such as AliExpress, Temu, Google, and Apple that have signed payment service agreements with Alipay.

According to the South Korean Credit Information Act, providing personal credit information to foreign enterprises requires the consent of users for the cross-border transmission of personal information.

KakaoPay then released a press release, stating that it has never provided user information illegally. According to the agreement of business entrustment and trusteeship among KakaoPay-Alipay-Apple, it does not need the consent of users when transferring the information required for the payment method of the application store, and the company adopted an encryption method of randomly changing codes when providing corresponding information to Alipay.