Kakao Taxi, a taxi hailing app operated by South Korea’s mobile giant Kakao, will feature a new automated payment function within the first half of this year, the company said Tuesday.

Kakao has entered a new partnership with Korea Smart Card Co. to jointly introduce an auto pay option on the KakaoTaxi app that is widely used by those in Korea. 


Once the new feature is added, KakaoTaxi app users will be presented with an “auto payment” option which would automatically pay for the taxi fare when the user arrives at his or her destination via Kakao Pay.

Kakao Pay is a simplified mobile payment service in which users register their credit or debit cards and make financial transactions by entering only a passcode, skipping the digital certification process.

According to Kakao Vice President Chung Joo-hwan, the local mobile giant has decided to introduce the new auto pay function after continued requests from users to add such a function.

“We discerned that we must introduce this function to widen our services as well as secure new, stable sources of profit,” said Chung. “In partnership with the KSCC, we hope to make Kakao Taxi a more convenient service.”

Under the partnership, the KSCC will handle the transactions and related processes that take place within the app, including connecting with card companies, processing payments and allocating them to taxi drivers.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)