KaKao

Your existence, qualifications, and career experiences are represented on KakaoTalk.

 

'Do text messages really need to be paid for?'

'Is it essential to provide the other party's account numbers when transferring money?'

'Why do we always have to hail a cab on the street?'

 

These small questions served as a driving force for the current Kakao community. KakaoTalk Wallet also started from questions about what had been taken for granted. 

 

'How about making KakaoTalk carry IDs, licenses, and certifications?'

 

Unbeknownst to us, KakaoTalk Wallet, starting with certifications and securing 30 million users in one year by adding features, has become a 'daily necessity.' Let's look back on its birth and growth.

 

#Naissance

KakaoTalk Wallet originated in the 'Certification TF' formed in January 2020. About 20 TF members grouped in the CPO (Chief Product Officer) organization, on the underlying assumption that ‘the optimum method to verify oneself online would be KakaoTalk.' As people spend more time online and represent themselves via multiple personas, authenticating the 'real self' offline is all that matters.

 

'Users will be able to prove their identification with the fast identity online solutions such as biometric authentification.' 'Let's make it possible to search for people with specific qualifications.' A variety of ideas came out. After almost a year of preparation, KakaoTalk Wallet was launched on December 16, 2020. Before that, the revised Digital Signature Act was approved in May 2020, and the mandatory accredited certificate use that had held monopolistic status started to be on the phase-out trail. The abolition gave private certifications safeguarded with an appropriate security system to be used in various areas.

 

KakaoTalk Wallet, launched in the enforcement period of the revised act, made a successful debut while being well received by the users during the year-end tax adjustment in January 2021. It broke from the convention of installing the ActiveX program on the Windows-based PC and successfully attracted over 5.5 million users just in one year.

 

Indy, the head of Payment Certification Platform Team, looked back upon that time. "The experience of being able to download data from various browsers such as Safari, Chrome, etc., through a simple verification process was enjoyable compared to the past. I got a lot of terrific feedback from acquaintances, which assured me of its public success."

 

 

#Leftover vaccines and certification

KakaoTalk Wallet was given a mission to help solve national disasters ahead of everything planned since the COVID-19 situation was prolonged and the vaccination plan got afoot. Kakao implemented the QR Check-in function or an electronic check-in a few months earlier. Still, the TF team couldn't shake off the strain of displaying real-time leftover vaccine appointments on the Kakao services and establishing identification procedures for reservation. 

 

Zool, the Wallet Marketing Team Lead, said, "Everyone shared situational awareness of these devastating problems, comparable to a quasi-state of war ― from an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease to a growing number of critically ill patients and deaths. Krews concentrated all their energy on the leftover vaccine daily pickup reservation project, hoping that Kakao's experience of filtering the enormous volume of online traffic would be put to good use."

 

Early in May 2021, the first task force team meeting was held at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency in Osong, Chungbuk. An air of urgency to raise the efficiency of so-called 'No-show vaccine appointments' amid insufficient vaccine supply and demand prevailed. It was all the work of vastly experienced old hands who could cope with the whole nation online, and some Internet service operators, including Kakao, came forward. The vaccine supply and demand situation was expected to ease in the last week of May. The task force team set its goal to release the service in that timescale.

 

Krews had just two weeks for development, from adjusting service specifications to embedding the real-time leftover vaccines search function in KakaoTalk. They swung into the 'Sprint' mode. It was a time when working from home was recommended, and Kakao had also enforced a telecommuting operation for over a year. Ironically, the Krews in the project team had to clock in the office over and over again.

 

On May 27, the leftover vaccine daily reservation service began in KakaoTalk. The real-time availability of leftover vaccines at nearby medical clinics is displayed, linked with KakaoMap. The list of clinics is sorted by the number of leftovers or by distance. All the procedures, from choosing nearby clinics for vaccination, clicking the 'Make a Reservation' button to verifying one's identity, can proceed apace and smoothly within KakaoTalk. It also makes a globally unique case that the government opened up APIs, and private platforms served as the front office.

 

 

The COVID-19 leftover vaccines daily reservation service, which was expected to be used temporarily only until the vaccine supply and demand situation eased, has still been utilized in various cases, such as youth inoculation and booster shots inoculation, etc.

 

#KakaoTalk Wallet nestled in the national experience

KakaoTalk Wallet's certification also played a crucial role in the government's vaccination booking system that began in August 2021. The 10th-day-no-booking system was applied per birthday to prevent heavy traffic in advance since a simple mobile authentication is highly likely to cause heavy traffic. As the number of reservations increased, the traffic to check leftovers decreased, and illegal access to vaccines using Macro programs also disappeared. Of course, Krews involved in the relevant tasks had to work 24/7 for more than ten days until the 10th-day-no-booking system would have been in place. 

 

Kakao Certification successfully coped with the most traffic among all the certification solutions in Korea and crossed the threshold of 20 million users along the way.

 

Korea hit the ground running in the Internet and mobile services but was slow in utilizing QR codes or spreading electronic authentication. Korean citizens, who were accustomed to credit cards due to their high penetration rate and user convenience, didn't see the necessity to scan QR codes for payment or remittance. Also, the accredited certification system with a monopolistic status for a long time became a great hindrance to the spread of electronic authentication.

 

Kakao solutions, released as a countermeasure against the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, have spread user experiences about QR codes or mobile certification that were a bit unknown at that time. Public certificates stored in USBs, paper certificates verifying one's vocational identity, and even COVID-19 vaccination application forms obviously submitted via facsimile or registered mail in the neighborhood countries are now easily carried in a single mobile messenger app KakaoTalk. Society begins to gain momentum for taking another step forward when a small innovation settles into everyone's experience.

 

#You can prove yourself with digital methods, even offline

Indy made comments on the near future that KakaoTalk Wallet would bring next. "Users are connected based on a personal acquaintance in KakaoTalk. What can you expect if you can prove yourself to strangers in an open chat situation? You can safely proceed with remittance, transactions, consultations with experts in KakaoTalk based on your acquaintances. Even on the metaverse platform, which has recently become a buzzword, the process of proving the real self and building up trust will be essential. Exactly at that point, KakaoTalk Wallet is expected to play a certain role."

 

Zool added that KakaoTalk Wallet had just gone through public works if compared to construction, metaphorically describing that a variety of variations would ensue to improve the service usability based on the basic infrastructure. KakaoTalk Wallet, verified by 30 million users in just one year in the general and public domain of certification and national technical license, has now started expanding its scope of activity in the digital card area.

 

Fairly typical cases include digital KBO club membership cards for KT Wiz, Samsung Lions, and LG Twins, aside from the national technical certificate, product certificate to prove collaboration with Kakao Friends and Melon's VIP card. These digital cards are required to verify membership ID offline or participate in an online meet and greet exclusively for card owners. The digital employee ID card, which will be spread in earnest from 2022, is also expected to be used as a verification method both online and offline. This is because permissions to access various facilities, security devices, online lectures, and chat rooms are all in one place.

 

 

Here's Zool's statement ― "The experience of keeping a thick wallet has faded from our memory due to the emergence of easy payment solutions after the age of credit cards. If we can keep IDs, licenses, certificates in our smartphones, the solution will gain much strength. The pace of change will not be hurried as it is a domain that should be supported by laws and systems. However, the simpler the wallet you carry every day, the greater the shape of change our world will influence. The wallet-less society has already been in place after the cash-less society. And at the starting point stand our Krews who have made KakaoTalk Wallet, which I take pride in."