A report from a local financial news channel read that the biggest South Korean Internet company in its marketing app, KakaoTalk, will integrate its encrypted wallet into its messaging application.
Kakao is the major South Korean Internet conglomerate operating on many platforms, such as KakaoTalk, KakaoPay, KakaoTaxi, KakaoStory, KakaoStock and many others.
More than 44 million Southern Koreans KakaoTalk users can send peer – to – peer transactions through a crypto-powered wallet from Kakao, according to the report. Kakao will integrate the two apps after Klaytn’s launch, its new commercial blockchain service, which was created by Kakao’s Ground X subsidiary, according to the reports. This year, Fnnews reported, Klaytn will be launched commercially at the end of June.
Recently, Bloomberg reported that after raising $90 million, the company would be conducting another $90 million initial coin offering (ICO).
A new smartphone in South Korea, the Galaxy S10, was reported to have wallet features for Ethereum (e.g., ETh), bitcoin (bitcoin), and two other tokens by the Samsung official in late February. The company had early officially announced that the phone had storage in a supposed Blockchain Keystore for private cryptocurrency keys.
The idea of incorporating a cryptocurrency wallet into the messaging app of the company does not seem to be inspired by the move of Samsung. This is because Kakao had already attracted funding estimated at US$ 90 million to develop Klatyn, a blockchain network, which it indicated was intended to.
Users can transmit, stock, receive and interact with many decentralized applications by implementing the cryptocurrency wallet in the Messaging app. Kakao does not, however, force the wallet against its users. The application will instead advise anyone who wants the crypto – monetary wallet to update the application software to include a cryptocurrency wallet.
It is reported that Kakao is willing to invest more than $57 million in new technologies including the blockchain. Another point in which the company is willing to invest is artificial intelligence, which is also very important to the plan of Kakao.
When asked for a comment, Heslin Kim, the South Korea-based CEO of BlockchainROK, said, “It’s so deeply attached to the meaning of being Korean. The fact that one of the most widely adopted applications, with a market share of over 95 percent, promotes and spearheads blockchain/crypto publicly is tremendous for mainstream adoption.”
If Kakao goes on to include crypto wallets in an application used by tens of millions of users in South Korea alone, the most popular device and messaging application for Samsung Galaxy S10 will have native crypto support. While a representative from Kakao has not officially confirmed the integration of crypto by KakaoTalk, the representative said he is making efforts to develop and expand blockchain technology.
The sentiments around the Samsung Blockchain Wallet launch and Kakao integration reports were positive and local market investors showed optimism with the country’s influential cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives.
For the time being, Kakao has been considering an opt-in method for enabling encryption and blockchain services. Simply put, users will have control over the crypto wallet’s presence in the message application.
