Kakao Talk gets integrated crypto wallet

The South Korean messaging app Kakao Talk will be getting a built-in cryptocurrency wallet. The app is being used by 44 million users on a daily basis, which is over 80 percent of the South Korean population. It’s not yet known which cryptocurrencies will be supported within the app.

Kakao Talk is very similar to Whatsapp, as it allows text messaging, voice calls and video chat. Obviously there’s also the general sending of photos and videos, and soon — apparently — cryptocurrencies.

The main reason for the wallet integration is that Kakao is busy moving its services towards the blockchain. They recently acquired 90 million dollars from investors to launch their own blockchain, called Klaytn. Kakao Talk will be the first internet service that will make the move to blockchain technology.

Users will be able to store funds in the wallet and run different decentralized apps (dApps). Even though Kakao wants to reach as many people as possible, at first users will only get access when they opt-in.

Kakao Talk is likely to be one of the first mainstream messenger services to implement cryptocurrencies into its service. However, Chinese-based Kik Messenger has been doing the same as well. Within that app users are able to spend KIN. On top of that, there are rumours about Facebook bringing crypto into Whatsapp. At of course there was the billion dollar ICO for the Russian privacy oriented chat app Telegram.

Originally published at NEDEROB.