Kakao Pay Corp., a mobile wallet subsidiary of South Korea’s platform giant Kakao Corp., managed to swing to profit for the first time on an individual basis in 2022 on the back of rising number of users.

Kakao Pay announced in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that its consolidated revenue reached 521.7 billion won ($416 million) in 2022, up 14 percent from a year ago. It is the first time for the company to top 500 billion won in revenue.

Kakao Pay logged an operating loss of 45.5 billion won in 2022, widening from a loss of 27.2 billion won in the previous year. The company, however, raised 27.5 billion won in net profit in 2022 thanks to increased financial profit from its reserves management.

On an individual basis that excludes earnings of its non-life insurance and securities subsidiaries, Kakao Pay reported an operating profit of 33.2 billion won in 2022, marking the first return on sales. Operating margin reached 6.9 percent last year.

Annual gross merchandise value (GMV) was up 19 percent on year to 118 trillion won.

For the fourth quarter alone, Kakao Pay reported 122.9 billion won in consolidated revenue, down 3.6 percent from the same period a year ago. Operating loss stood at 22.3 billion won due to losses from its subsidiaries, although narrowing 22.8 percent from a year ago.

GMV increased 17 percent to 30.9 trillion won in the October-December period.

Kakao Pay was able to report solid growth despite the fallout from a nationwide service disruption due to a fire that broke out in a data center in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province.

The number of Kakao Pay users increased 5 percent to 39.44 million at the end of last year. Monthly active users increased 7 percent in the same period to 23.02 million, and transactions per user also rose 7 percent to 101.

“The company is expanding global offline payment networks in Japan, Macao, Singapore, France, and China,” said an unnamed official from Kakao Pay. “We are also engaged in efforts to improve convenience of overseas service users.”

Shares of Kakao Pay were trading 1.12 percent higher at 63,300 won by midday.

By Pulse

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