Kakao Pay raided by South Korean police over alleged transfer of 542 billion personal records to China's Alipay

South Korean police conducted a raid on Kakao Pay's headquarters in Seongnam, Seong‑dong district, after the Financial Supervisory Service requested an investigation. The probe concerns allegations that Kakao Pay transmitted personal data of about 40 million users – roughly 542 billion individual records – to the Chinese mobile‑payment platform Alipay without user consent. The alleged transfers occurred between 2018 and May 2024.

Investigators seized electronic data and internal documents, and will analyse the material while questioning company staff and corporate entities. Kakao Pay has previously been penalised for privacy violations, receiving a 5.96 billion‑won fine from the Personal Information Protection Commission and a 12.976 billion‑won fine plus a warning from the Financial Supervisory Service. The company maintains that the data sharing was part of a lawful outsourcing arrangement for an Apple‑commissioned credit‑scoring model, and it has appealed the court’s ruling that it failed to obtain user consent.

The raid marks the latest step in a series of regulatory actions aimed at enforcing South Korea’s data‑protection laws and scrutinising cross‑border data flows with China.