On Tuesday last week, Bango announced a new partnership with KakaoPay, the leading digital wallet in South Korea. Partnerships are a key part of the Bango Payments growth strategy, as explained on our investor website here. They enable our customers to access significant volumes of users quickly. The partnership with KakaoPay, for example, gives merchants connected to Bango access to 37 million users in South Korea. More users means more spending via the Bango Platform, which means more data to monetize via Bango Audiences, powering our virtuous circle business model.
KakaoPay is the mobile payment and digital wallet service within KakaoTalk, South Korea’s most downloaded app. KakaoPay enables users to make instant, cashless payments online and in-store. There is also a credit option available, and users can accrue loyalty points for their spending which can be spent online like cash, as an added incentive to spend with the service.
Not only does the KakaoPay partnership give access to a huge volume of high-spending consumers, it also connects Bango customers with one of the world’s fastest growing ecommerce markets. In 2020, South Korea’s e-commerce market expanded by c.20% making it the fifth largest e-commerce market globally, ahead of France and Germany. E-commerce sales hit $104 billion in 2020 and are estimated to grow a further 25% in 2021 reaching $120 billion. The growth in the South Korean e-commerce shows no sign of slowing down, with analysts predicting growth beyond $242 billion by 2025 [1]. South Korean ecommerce growth has been driven primarily by domestic companies, but the opportunity is attracting international business and it is consumer spending with these global businesses that is factored into analysts forecasts for 2025.
By partnering with KakaoPay, Bango continues to increase its coverage of paying customers using the fastest growing online payment methods. Through one integration, the global leaders that use Bango to collect payments can now reach 37 million online customers in South Korea, in addition to over 3 billion more across six continents, making Bango one of the most pervasive payment platforms in the world.
[1] https://www.globaldata.com/e-commerce-market-south-korea-surpass-us242bn-2025-says-globaldata/
