South Korean Tech Giant Kakao to Integrate Crypto Wallet to Its Messaging App

21. Mar 2019 Posted by Akolkar B on News

The Asian country of South Korea continues to stay at the forefront when it comes to cryptocurrency use and adoption. Despite the recent meltdown in the crypto market, South Korea’s tech industry remains upbeat with interesting use cases for digital currencies.

South Korea’s internet giant Kakao plans to integrate cryptocurrency wallet to its widely use messaging platform KakaoTalk. The KakaoTalk dominates over 90% of the South Korea’s online messaging industry with over 44 million local users.

Thus, the crypto wallet integration to this platform will give a huge boost to the mass adoption of digital currencies and blockchain technology. South Korea’s local news publication Fnnews reports that the decision from Kakao comes just after Samsung announced to integrate crypto wallet to its latest Galaxy S10 smartphone.

“Following the integration of Blockchain Keystore on Samsung, the integration of a crypto wallet by Kakao, which is used by the majority of messaging app users in the nation, is expected to expand blockchain services and usage,” reports the publication.

It also adds that launch of crypto wallet integration on KakaoTalk will happen simultaneously along with the launch of Kakao’s Klaytn blockchain network. Kakao has reportedly raised over $90 million funds for the the development of its Klaytn platform.

The publication notes that the launch of Klaytn and the crypto-wallet integration on KakaoTalk could happen around June 2019. Fines states that the crypto wallet will allow users to seamlessly send, receive, and store cryptocurrencies across a range of applications available on the Klaytn platform.

One industry executive said: “Kakao needs a cryptocurrency wallet for users of Klaytn and the best way to roll out the service is to integrate a crypto wallet into KakaoTalk, which over 80 percent of the population of South Korea use to communicate”.

Initially, KakaoTalk will implement a opt-in method to facilitate blockchain and cryptocurrency services. With this, users will get an absolute control over integrating the crypto wallet to their KakaoTalk account.

Note that KakaoTalk is not the first tech company to come up with the idea of having a native cryptocurrency on its messaging platform. Social media giant Facebook is planning for a similar launch of its native crypto token Facebook Coin on WhatsApp, and also on Facebook Messenger and Instagram.