Good morning and good evening. Thank you all for joining the conference call for the KakaPay earnings results. This conference will start with a presentation followed by a Q and A session. Now we will begin the presentation on Kakapay's 2025 Earnings Results.
Good afternoon. This is Ellen, the CEO. Thank you all for joining Kakaopay's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. I will begin with key performance metrics, TPV, consolidated basis revenue and expense, profit and loss, which will be followed with business performance highlights for 2025. First, on key metrics for the second quarter.
Q2 twenty twenty five TPV was up 10% year on year, reaching KRW 45,000,000,000,000. Revenue TPV was KRW 13,200,000,000,000.0, rising 9% year over year. Q2 twenty twenty five revenue was 28.5 percent higher versus the second quarter of last year, reporting KRW 238,300,000,000.0. Digital Finance revenue for the first time recorded KRW100 billion level accounting for 42% of total revenue. Second quarter operating profit was KRW9.3 billion, sustaining quarterly profit making streak for two consecutive quarters.
Q2 net income was KRW 14,100,000,000.0, EBITDA KRW 17,400,000,000.0 and financial income reported KRW 13,500,000,000.0. Next is on key business metrics. DAU of Kakaopay increased 3% year over year to 6,350,000 users, accounting for 26.9% of MAU. This is 2.2 percentage point increase versus 24.7% of 2024, which is a testament to growing user stickiness towards Kakao Pay services. Average transaction per user for Q2 was 69, which is up 37% year over year.
We are seeing an uptrend in user transaction across securities, benefits and payments. And ARPU in Q2 reported 10,075 won, breaking 10,001 level for the first time. Digital financial revenue posted 82% year on year increase, which drove ARPU increase of 36% year over year. Next, I would like to invite our CFO, Aiden, who will present on Q2 TPV and other financial results. Hello, this is Aiden.
If you look at Q2 TPV, it was up 10% year over year, reporting KRW 45,000,000,000,000. Revenue TPV increased 9% on year, reporting KRW 13,200,000,000,000.0. We see TPV uptrend across all domains of payment, financial services and money transfer. Payment TPV was up 10% year on year on service expansion through good deal affinity partners and strong promotion of seasonal events and special deal promotions at CBS. Offline payment TPV hence increased 35% year over year.
While cross border TPV increased 20% year on year, driven by growth of key online merchants and inbound travelers from China. Loan TPV was up 6% year on year, while stock trading volume reported KRW23 trillion doubling year over year. Money Transfer TPV increased 10% year on year, while PayMoney subscribers reached over 31,000,000,000 and monthly user count reached around 20,000,000. Next, operating revenue. Before moving on to the breakdown, we renamed Other Services into Platform Services as we are starting to see results materialize from platform based businesses.
Q2 revenue was up 28.5% year on year, reporting KRW 238,300,000,000.0 and digital finance was up 82%, platform services 45% versus last year, which all drove top line growth. Digital finance for the first time reported KRW 100,000,000,000 in terms of revenue, accounting for 42% of total revenue. While online payment service growth was somewhat unsatisfactory, offline and cross border continued a double digit growth trajectory, driving total payment service growth of 3% year over year. Financial Services saw revenue growth across entire services, which are loan, investments and insurance recording 81.8% year over year growth and 25.1% growth Q over Q. Investment increased 148% year over year driven by uptrend in TPV both domestic and overseas on top of growth from the IB business.
While insurance increased 88% year over year following the launch of new products on top of stable base of current products and expansion of insurance database or data sales. Loan service saw growing user inflow from customized recommendations with the underpinning of data, but due to lending related regulations in June posted a mere growth of 3% year on year. Platform service revenue saw 45% year over year growth driven by card recommendations and advertisement services. Q2 operating expense was up 18.8% year on year and 10.3% Q on Q, reaching KRW $229,000,000,000. Marketing expense in Q2 increased 23.4% year on year on co marketing with strategic partners and promotions for financial services, but it was around 8.7% against revenue keeping below the 10% range.
Labor cost increased 19.5% year on year due to bonuses paid subsidiaries and stock based compensation. As operating expenses, which are linked to higher revenue and financial subsidiaries increased, other expense increased 72.2% year on year. Next is profit and loss. Q2 Kakao Pay's consolidated operating profit was billion, more than doubling versus last quarter as we continue to fortify earnings power. Net income and EBITDA were KRW14.1 billion and KRW17.4 billion, respectively, achieving double digit figure.
On improved business performance, we are seeing fundamental capacity grow stronger. And Financial Services, including Securities and Insurance, will sustain their top line growth and with rising of new platform business coupled with company wide cost savings, we will gradually improve profit making structure. Q2 stand alone revenue was up 8.4% year on year and 3.9% Q over Q, reaching KRW167.2 billion. Operating profit for the quarter was KRW14.2 billion with OP margin of 8.5%. Stand alone net income was KRW 20,700,000,000.0.
And next, I would like to invite Jason, who will run through the highlights of the second quarter performance. Hello, this is Jason, heading the business division. First is on the payment. We've created strategic and cooperative framework with a total of eight different companies, including Vans and POS, post companies, building up an alliance to expand on the offline business. By developing system interface with such companies, we plan to provide added services such as CRM tools, which will help drive top line revenue of merchants.
We're also supporting setting up QR based ordering system for merchants nationwide, which is more cost efficient when compared to usage fees for tablet terminal devices, driving synergies from our alliance partners. This will help merchants to reduce on cost, improve access to customers, while Cacao Pay users will enjoy attractive benefits and maximize convenience. Together with the partners partaking in the alliance, we will seek various ways to support smaller vendors and owners to create a payment ecosystem that brings benefits to all. Next, platform services. As mentioned, we changed the name from other services to platform services in order to capture new business expansion into the domains of advertising, credit card and telecom services.
Firstly, Pay's ad business saw its revenue grow 66% year on year powered by MyData. We've refined targeted ads using MyData and payment data and based on this, Kakao Pay's ad business is evolving into high margin sales lead model. Our internal analytics show that My Data based targeted ad is driving three times click through rate, doubling of conversion and 40% lower acquisition cost, and it's a win win for both users and advertisers alike. Another pillar of growth is credit card brokerage. Number of cards issued based on Kakao Pay's intermediation increased by 2.6 times year over year on higher demand from users, which was driven by recommendations based on personalized analytics providing highly superior benefits to users.
For instance, cumulative issuance of Travelogue check card reached above $200,000 which delivers distinctive experience of hyperconnectivity, allowing link up with any bank account Kakaopay user has. Through partnerships and collaborations, Kakaopay is also offering comparison services for telco rates, including MNO and MVNO schemes. Through such alliance and collaboration, Kakaopay will diversify strategic telco plans and through adopting hyper personalized recommendation service powered by MyData, we plan to speed up growth. Next, Jeff, who leads our services domain, will talk about AI services and business results of KakaoPay Securities and Insurance Services for the second quarter. Hello, this is Jeff.
Under the name PayEye, we will be unveiling KakaoPay's AI services in consecutive phases. First of such endeavor is AI diagnostics for insurance, which opened officially last June. Basically, AI will analyze health checkup results and insurance coverage, pinpointing potential needs for insurance protection, which will drive great synergies from Kakao P's insurance services. Although at its early stage, we're making meaningful business contributions and gaining positive user feedback. KakaoTalk will spearhead industry's evolution into agentic AI based on three core strengths, which are firstly, massive user data second, financial products that drive real behavior and three, strong accessibility that KakaoTalk provides.
We will be starting with AI for insurance diagnostics, which will be followed by AI services across each financial domain as we integrate and evolve into financial AI agent. In payment, our plan is to launch spending AI and payment agent to be the key enablers for transactional services, helping them to adopt agent models with ease. We will also work in tandem with Kakao's AI agent to fortify channel competitiveness of Kakao Pay's AI services. Next is KataoPay Securities. Q2 stock trading volume increased 101% year on year to KRW 23,500,000,000,000.0, while number of transactions for the quarter tripled recording KRW 91,000,000, while monthly user count was up 75% year on year breaking 1,000,000 count.
Total deposit asset increased 89% for the same period to GBP 5,600,000,000,000.0 driven by uptrend in stock trading volume, which led to increase in stock balance. Annuity savings asset broke KRW 100,000,000,000 in deposit assets in just six months since its release contributing to growing assets under deposit. With trading volume growing, fee income and IB revenue also increased, driving Q2 revenue up 126% year on year to €65,600,000,000 with €5,200,000,000 in operating profit, attesting to solid growth of operating profit for three consecutive quarters. Next is on insurance services. Underpinned by the massive user pool and data power targeting, Kakao Pay's insurance consultation data showed sevenfold growth year over year.
We expect to be able to expand insurance consultation user pool initially from 7,000,000 of Kakao Pay Insurance's MyData enabled base to 20,000,000 who are MyData users of Kakao Pay to eventually 33,000,000 of total users of Kakao Pay services. To leverage this growing database and enable a one stop service leading up to the sign up of insurance policies, we're working under the goal of adopting a business model to maximize growth and profitability during the third quarter. We've hence set up a collaborative framework with professional GA groups to enhance operational efficiency and minimize the risk of directly managing agent organizations. Upon success gained from consultation linked business and enhanced data analytics capacity, we will expand into the domain of direct consultation. As such, we are seeking to deliver consistent experience from customer acquisition to consultation, thereby driving up operation efficiency and increasing the sign up ratio to secure steady source of new income.
Next, Alan will end the presentation with ESG and our future plans. It's Alan again. Last June, we published our third ESG report. And in the report, we made disclosures on key issues in compliance with IFRS sustainability disclosure standards, and we achieved data connectivity disclosure rate of 99.8% on revenue basis. We also used ISAE 3,000 as a third party validation standard, further bolstering trust and transparency of information under disclosure.
In addition to the ESG report, we also delivered wide ranging information to stakeholders through a variety of channels for ESG disclosure such as corporate governance reports and environmental information disclosure. In terms of our shared growth programs, under our slogan and the spirit of closer with Kakao, we are making wide ranging efforts to be by the side of local communities. We've been running Ode Ode together store campaign for small business owners and Kakaopay Insurance together with Habitat Korea carried out campaigns to prevent fraudulent rent schemes. Also to commemorate International Firefighters Day, we donated safety gear to Wildfire Prevention Squad, who showed exceptional caliber in suppressing recent forest fire. We also held lecture courses on credit for military personnel at Army base in collaboration with credit counseling and recovery service.
Kakaopay will continue to engage in ESG activities aligned with our business objectives as we strive to live up to our social responsibilities in an effort to ensure sustainable future. We've so far gone through key highlights for 2025. Since achieving a turnaround in operating profit for the first time last quarter, we were able to solidify stronger fundamentals by generating better results in the second quarter. Kakaopay has been steadfast in pursuing three key strategies, which are value chain expansion, data powered business development and traffic driven new business expansion. First, we expanded business reach through off line payment alliance, insurance consultation linked business as we ride over the saturated market in view of expanding the business value chain.
Second, Kakao Paid MyData is now set up as our core infrastructure used across all business domains, spanning loans, non financial brokerage and AI services. It is now working as a fuel kick starting growth engine behind various revenue streams and enabling sustainable growth of KakaoTay. Third, by combining personalized targeting with massive user traffic, which we secured through strong content offerings and servicing, we are nurturing future growth engine in not only financial business, but also non financial segments, including in ads and telecom brokerage, fully leveraging the platform capabilities. Under these three strategic pillars, Kakaopay will generate both growth and profit to not fall short of market expectations. Thank you very much.
The first question will be provided by Jungkook Kim from Keywoon Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you for taking my question. I just have one question on AI. We've heard that Kakao is making preparations to roll out an AI agent in November. Would like to know as to whether there are any collaborations with Kakao Pay? And what are Kakao Pay's planning going forward?
Hello, this is Jeff. I will answer your question. Through the AI agent, we want people to discover wide ranging functionality of Kakao Pay through the AI agent. And eventually we will be able to broaden the scope and build that. At initial launch, we're thinking of a simple form of connection enabled services.
For example, user says, make a transfer to Kakao AI agent, after which you get connected to Kakao Pay's money transfer features. And of course, same thing will apply to other services as we expect. So following the launch, we then move on to Phase two, where we will be able to innovate user experience. And so we are currently talking to Kakao on this very topic. So first stage is strengthening data connection based on MCP.
It's where KakaoTai agent queries and summarizes data of KakaoTai. For instance, user can prompt the agent by saying, show me the most recent payment record, to which the agent looks for user's payment data, including the use of Katao Pay and summarizes and delivers the rightful insight. Second stage is merging with business logic. Simply put, key features of Pay are made complete inside the AI agent. For example, by using the AI agent, you can get gift recommendations and the payment will be made by credit cards that is most often used or be made with the one that gives the best benefit to the user.
So everything happens without having to leave the AI agent. To enable this, number one, Kakao Pay needs to have payment MCP or payment agent number two, we need to agree on the implementation with Kakao's AI agent and Kakao Pay and number three, involve not only Kakao, but non captive commerce and O2O services as well. So it is truly a big task, but it's the right way forward. So we are currently discussing this topic as well. Through such strong collaboration with Kakao AI agent, we will continue to work towards building and offering industry leading AI services. Thank you. Next question.
The following question will be presented by Dongwoo Kim from Kyobo Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. I have two questions. First is on your offline business. We've seen a continuous uptrend in your offline payment. I would like to get some color as to what your midterm based ARPU and ATPU guidance or outlook gives.
If you could share that with us, that would be great. The second question relates to your existing guidance. We would like to know since you are posting quite solid top line and bottom line earnings power, I would like to know whether you have plans to up your guidance that you have previously communicated, which was at 15% to 25% top line year on year growth. This is Jeff from Services responding to your first question. Now offline payment continued on its growth following the optimization that we've implemented since May 2024 on the payment tab, the payment window and the benefit offerings.
Now this drove payment users to reach above 5,000,000 as of the 2025. Our target for the year is 6,000,000 payment user count and 50,000,000 monthly transactions, and we are smooth saving towards that goal. So our goal basically is to reach 10,000,000 payment users by 2027 end and grow into a platform with 100,000,000 payment counts per month. To do that, we need to grow the offline user pool and increase the monthly payment frequency, so both quality and volume growth. To reach these goals, we, on the one hand, focus on fundamentals while driving new usability and use cases.
On the fundamental slides, there are three projects that are currently ongoing, working very quickly to deliver that change to users starting second half. First is on good deal voucher for gifting, which will be expanded in order to give more benefits to our users, while we deliver a hyper personalized experience for benefit offerings that is based on buying habits per user. Second, through refined merchant membership service and QR ordering at tables, we will deliver a complete end to end user experience spanning pre and post payment stage. Lastly, we will upgrade users' payment experience at long tail merchants through further refining of merchant services. This will enable Kakaopay to build an offline ecosystem most robust with depth in connecting users with merchants.
And also in terms of the new usability that I've mentioned, we're looking at it from three different aspects. First, we will continue to look for payment modes that are safe and convenient other than and aside from QR and barcode. Second, we will look for different options to expand the behavior of using community based currencies and shopping, coupon and vouchers. And last, we will look to leverage AI agent in our offline payment scheme. These efforts will help Kakao Pay to differentiate and boost inflow and retention across its entire paid platform.
Hello, this is CFO, Aiden. I will respond to the second question that you posed. So as you've mentioned, during the second quarter, we reported a top line growth of 28.5, which is above our annual guidance of 15% to 25% range. Especially, Financial Service revenue increased 82% compared to last year, reaching above $100,000,000,000 for the first time. And Platform revenue also was up by 45% year on year, recording 12,800,000,000.0.
This was the first time that quarterly revenue was above that KRW 10,000,000,000 range. So looking at the first half results, there is, yes, clear structural growth from Kakaopay, the mother entity level and its financial subsidiaries. But in the second half, we expect many external factors, including lending related regulations that can impact our subsidiary businesses. This, in turn, is heightening volatility. So rather than upping the guidance, our guidance will remain as is as we keep close tabs on the market, we will continue to build on fundamental earnings capacity and drive strategic growth. Next question, please.
The following question will be presented by Sin Young Park from Goldman Sachs Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. I'm Park Shin Young from Goldman Sachs. I would like to ask you a question on your securities business. I believe that we are not seeing some meaningful expansion in your market share since the launch of MTS back in 2022. Is it right to say that the tipping point was driven by the cross border trading related promotions as well as the stock collection?
Did these make that difference? And also going forward, in order to maintain that elevated level of user engagement, do you have any certain killer, I guess, features or strategies that you're considering at this point? That's the question. And also on top of that, in your view, what is the most optimal mix between your domestic and your overseas business from a longer term perspective? Hello, this is Eddie responding to your question.
And yes, you are right. There is a clear market share expansion seen from our overseas stock trading in 2025. And paid securities, if you look at their trading volume in Q1, reported $18,000,000,000,000 In Q2, it was $23,500,000,000,000 which is up by 101% year over year and 30% Q over Q, showing an upward trend. Now we expect this trend to continue and think we can achieve our year end market share target. And yes, as you've mentioned, stock collecting and promotion for overseas trading played an important part in creating that tipping point.
But there are two key drivers behind retail business growth as we see it. And the first one is the new account opening and the second is conversion of active customers. So monthly new account openings are in the range of 80,000 to 100,000, placing Kakao Pay a number one rank in the financial industry for 2025. And people learning about Kakao Pay services through stock collection feature and opening accounts are also included in this figure. And synergies with Kakaopay and good accessibility and convenience that we offer are also driving the inflow of customers.
New customer acquisition, which is quite overwhelming, plays critical role in bringing new services to take solid positioning in the market. As a result, we were able to secure competitive customer acquisition cost. So the next step in this journey is to convert the new customers into monthly active users. This is very important. The new customers who we acquire through stock collecting or pension products gets converted into active customers through the promotions that we run for overseas trading.
Active customer conversion rate hence was up 40% in Q2 versus the first quarter, which is quite meaningful. So as there are more active users, trading volume grows, which drove currency conversion fee income and credit extension leading to solid financial results. Our plan therefore is to increase active customer share from 30% to 35%, which is the current level, to eventually 70% in the mid- to longer term time frame. As part of upgraded strategy and active customer engagement in the second half, we're going to try a couple of new killer services in the second half of the year. We will be introducing innovative multi leg offshore derivative product of Eugene Investment and Futures and we'll also start ISA services.
We will launch derivative products on KakaoPay platform under the service agreement with Eugene Futures, and this would be the first such case of introducing and rolling out multi leg offshore derivative. It combines more than two option positions in order to lower risk and increase expected return. It's a service that's preferred recently by offshore retail platforms like Robinhood and Weibo, and it's very it's growing very fast as well. We're also working on refining current service offerings, promoting communities by adopting the concept of followers with a revamping of the profile feature and are also planning to deliver real time investment information using AI feature. Lastly, on the most optimal mix between domestic and overseas trading, there is no one answer as entities have different objectives and market changes constantly.
We just believe that our role is to come up with the most innovative service distinct to Cacao Pay and help people to find right information and build on their wealth. Whether for domestic or for overseas trade, we think what's important is to quickly capture opportunities amid changing trends to deliver services and develop business models. This will count as important aspects of our competitiveness. So we're running out of time. We will be taking the final question.
The last question will be presented by Joonwoo Kim from CGSI. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. I have a question on your payment business. Would like to gain some understanding as to what your strategies are in expanding your overseas payment business in collaboration with Alipay? And what would be the contribution of such effort from short term also and on a long term basis? Hello, this is Jason.
Based on the strategic partnership that we have with Alipay, we've been really focusing on expanding countries for cross border payment and merchants and have been able to thus maintain an edge competitive edge in terms of number of merchants and TPV versus our competitors. And based on this competitive edge, in the second half of the year, we will be focusing on strengthening users' convenience and offering of benefits in order to expand and evolve into a platform for overseas travel on top of the simple cross border services. And as part of those major services, we're planning on launching NFC payment, mini programs and Voyager services. So we will be the first to enable payments based on NFC for pay money prepaid transactions with acceptance at 150,000,000 Mastercard merchants worldwide based on the partnership between Alipay Plus and Mastercard and this will massively enhance convenience for global payments. We also expect this to drive TPV and top line from regions such as Europe, Americas and Oceania, where NFC and tap to pay is used more actively versus QR payment.
We are projecting no less than three digit growth in TPV and revenue from NFC payment for upcoming three years. And when NFC payment expands globally, we expect to see additional growth. And for the Mini Program, it will allow users to discover benefits provided by local merchants in 20 different countries through the use of the Pay app, enabling users to enjoy more benefits from countries that they are traveling to without having that constraint. Also through merchant funding, which helps save on the marketing spend and through creating business opportunities with companies who partake in the program, we can gain new revenue streams aside from simply the payment fees. And lastly, Voyager is a all in one travel package that makes the entire process of going on a trip more convenient from preparing for the journey and completing it.
We're literally changing the scene from point of payment to point of planning for a trip, enabling travelers to enjoy everyday services through the Kakao Pay app without the need of downloading another local application. Basically, through Kakao Pay app, before the trip, you can book local plane tickets, hotels, transportation, activities and tourist attractions and restaurants. And also AI Travel Assistant will also be introduced, significantly improving the benefits that are offered and the convenience that it delivers, helping with scheduling and recommendations, delivering something and it's an experience that is completely different in terms of the travel experience that people are used to. So through this, the cross border payment that Kakaopay provides will enable an evolution into a number one overseas travel platform, and it will generate a new opportunity for growth. So thank you very much.
This ends the second quarter twenty twenty five Kakao Pay's earnings call. Once again, thank you for joining. And if you still have any unanswered questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at the IR team. Thank