Kakao Pay, the mobile payments arm of South Korea's IT behemoth Kakao, has denied accusations of illicit use of customer data following revelations from a Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) investigation. The FSS disclosed that Kakao Pay allegedly shared credit information of about 40 million customers with third parties without their consent, stemming from an inspection of the company's overseas payment services. The FSS identified two main issues with Kakao Pay's data handling practices. Firstly, it is accused of sharing personal data of users who had not consented to overseas payment services with Alipay, including usernames, phone numbers, email addresses, balances, and transaction records. Secondly, the FSS found that Kakao Pay improperly disclosed unnecessary credit data of overseas payment customers to Alipay, with approximately 550 million instances of such unnecessary data transfers occurring since November 2019. In response to the FSS report, Kakao Pay issued a statement refuting the allegations, stating that they have not illegally shared customers' personal information and that the data processing delegation for payment services on Apple's App Store was a standard procedure. The company noted that it has not yet received an official opinion from the FSS since the on-site inspection in May. Following the FSS report, a Kakao Pay official declined to comment further and stated that the investigation is still ongoing. The FSS plans to conduct a thorough legal review and initiate sanctions while also investigating similar cases.