Kakao Pay and Japan’s PayPay have expanded their partnership. Now, PayPay users from Japan can make offline payments at over 2 million stores in Korea.
The South Korean payments company said on Thursday that PayPay is now linked to offline stores in Korea, letting Japanese travelers pay just like they do in Japan.
This is PayPay’s first expansion outside Japan. 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. Between January and July, 1.92 million Japanese tourists visited Korea.
The service is made possible through a three-way partnership between Kakao Pay, PayPay, and Alipay+.
This follows Kakao Pay’s expansion in November 2024, when Korean tourists could use Kakao Pay to make offline payments in Japan through PayPay’s network.
Kakao Pay, the fintech division of IT giant Kakao, is the only Korean company connecting foreign payment networks to offline stores in Korea. Before PayPay, it linked Vietnam’s ZaloPay, Pakistan’s NayaPay, and Uzbekistan’s Humo to Korean merchants.
On Monday, Kakao Pay also launched NFC (near-field communication) payments, giving Korean users more options to pay abroad 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.”
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