Announcement of the appearance of ‘Kakao Membership’
Release Date, Composition, and Price Undetermined

[Chat GPT] 사진 확대 [Chat GPT]

Kakao will introduce a membership that integrates affiliate services into one. It is a strategy to strengthen the influence of the platform ecosystem around KakaoTalk. The release date and subscription price are still undecided, but it seems that it will be able to compete with Naver’s membership.

According to the IT industry on the 3rd, Kakao is planning to introduce a beta version of its “Kakao Membership.” The specific launch schedule and the composition of the benefits have not been finalized. The subscription fee is also set only when the service included in the membership is confirmed.

In the IT industry, Kakao Talk (emoticon, gift giving, cloud), Kakao Mobility (taxi, parking), Kakao Entertainment (webtoon, page, melon), Kakao VX (golf), and Kakao Style (Zigzag) are mentioned as targets for linkage. If you pay the subscription fee every month, free use, discounts, and coupons will be provided.

It is difficult to rule out the possibility of partnering with global partners. Earlier, Kakao signed a contract with OpenAI and embedded ChatGPT in KakaoTalk. In addition, through a conference call to announce its performance in the second quarter, it announced that it would reorganize its artificial intelligence (AI) agents so that Coupang Eats can be used on KakaoTalk. As Naver has launched Netflix, Kakao can also add online video services (OTT) to its membership benefits.

[Kakao] 사진 확대 [Kakao]

Kakao’s membership promotion is interpreted as an attempt to improve service accessibility and expand user stay time by grouping subscription products operated by each affiliate. Competition with competitors is also expected to intensify. Naver has built a membership model that costs 4,900 won per month, Toss 5,900 won per month, and Coupang 7,890 won per month.

An IT industry official said, “Since the subscription rights contain their own colors and strengths, Kakao membership is also expected,” but added, “The key is how Kakao brings a differentiated strategy to overcome the limitation of being a latecomer.”

Internet users’ responses are still lukewarm. In the online community, there are various voices such as “What is useful is a taxi?” “The price of a subscription must be high because the emoticon is 3,900 won per month and the text drawer is 2,100 won per month,” “I want to use only the services I need,” “I’m curious about the advantages compared to Naver,” “It would be convenient to combine them because they were independent students,” and “Let’s decide after looking at the details.”