KakaoPay

Introduction

KakaoPay is a mobile-first digital wallet deeply integrated into KakaoTalk, South Korea's dominant messaging app. Integrating KakaoPay with Payrails allows you to offer a seamless, familiar checkout experience to South Korean customers while leveraging our platform to route the payment via Checkout.com as a Payment Service Provider (PSP).

KakaoPay uses a redirect-based payment flow. When a customer selects KakaoPay at checkout, they are redirected to KakaoPay's app or web interface to authenticate and confirm their payment, then redirected back to your website or app upon completion. KakaoPay is a single-use payment method where customers must authenticate each payment.

This guide explains the process of integrating KakaoPay into your app or website using Payrails.

Pre-requisites

Before you start accepting KakaoPay payments with Payrails, there are a few requirements you must meet:

1. Integrate with Payrails using one of our SDKs or our API
2. Configure a new integration account for KakaoPay via Checkout.com as a Payment Service Provider. If you do not have a Checkout.com integration already configured in your workspace, please follow the Checkout.com integration setup guide first.
3. Enable KakaoPay as a payment method in your Checkout.com integration configuration. In the Payrails portal, navigate to Settings → Integrations, select your Checkout.com integration instance, and enable the KakaoPay checkbox under Payment methods, then save the account.
4. Enable KakaoPay as a payment option in your workflow.
5. Make sure you're sending the KakaoPay specific meta fields (found under Merchant configurations → Meta fields on your Payrails dashboard and in the examples below) in your requests.

Ways to integrate KakaoPay

Payrails SDK

The simplest way to use KakaoPay with Payrails is to use our drop-in in your checkout flow. With this integration type, no additional work is required to accept payments with KakaoPay except for handling success/failure screens for your users.

For a more flexible implementation using our SDK, you can use our genericRedirectButton element. See special instructions here for your client-side implementation.

Server-to-server integration

You can integrate KakaoPay by completely managing your own client-side implementation, and using Payrails APIs with a server-to-server integration to process KakaoPay payments. With this approach, follow the documentation below to build KakaoPay into your applications:

Parse KakaoPay from lookup response

With a server-to-server integration, you can call our lookup payment options endpoint to get available payment options and relevant configurations for each payment method. As shown in the example below, you can see kakaoPay returned as an option of the paymentCompositionOptions. You can use this value later to authorize payments with Payrails as shown in the next sections.

{
  "name": "lookup",
  "actionId": "0bb6413e-cabb-4074-99e6-9e815c69f25b",
  "executedAt": "2026-03-26T12:00:00.000000000Z",
  "data": {
    "paymentCompositionOptions": [
      {
        "integrationType": "api",
        "paymentMethodCode": "kakaoPay",
        "description": "KakaoPay"
      }
    ]
  },
  "links": {
    "execution": "https://payrails-api.staging.payrails.io/merchant/workflows/payment-acceptance/executions/83c534ac-13b7-43e6-b04b-f3e8b4eb4424",
    "authorize": {
      "method": "POST",
      "href": "https://payrails-api.staging.payrails.io/merchant/workflows/payment-acceptance/executions/83c534ac-13b7-43e6-b04b-f3e8b4eb4424/authorize"
    }
  }
}

Pass KakaoPay payment method in request to authorize payment with Payrails

You can then make a request to our authorize a payment endpoint with kakaoPay as the paymentMethodCode. See an example below:

{
  "executionId": "c0fd1c51-e709-47e5-bfd1-5d1c98f7d990",
  "amount": {
    "value": "10000",
    "currency": "KRW"
  },
  "paymentComposition": [
    {
      "integrationType": "api",
      "paymentMethodCode": "kakaoPay",
      "amount": {
        "value": "10000",
        "currency": "KRW"
      }
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "customer": {
      "name": "John Smith",
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "phone": {
        "number": "01012345678",
        "countryCode": "82"
      },
      "country": {
        "code": "KR"
      }
    }
  },
  "returnInfo": {
    "success": "https://mysuccessurl.com",
    "error": "https://myerrorurl.com"
  }
}Singapore Dollar

Note on amounts: KRW is a zero-decimal currency — amounts should be provided as whole numbers (e.g., 10000 for ₩10,000). Do not include decimal places.

Note: KakaoPay is a redirect-based, single-use payment method. After calling the authorize endpoint, the customer will be redirected to KakaoPay to authenticate and confirm the payment. Once the payment is confirmed, the customer will be redirected back to the returnInfo.success URL. Make sure to provide valid returnInfo URLs in your authorization request.

Handle the redirect response

After the customer completes the payment on KakaoPay's side, they will be redirected back to your success or error URL. You should then verify the payment status by checking the workflow execution status via the Payrails API or by listening to webhook notifications.

Supported currencies

KakaoPay via Checkout.com supports the following presentment currencies:

• KRW - Won
• HKD - Hong Kong Dollar
• SGD - Singapore Dollar

Supported regions / countries

Customer regions

KakaoPay is available to customers based in:

• South Korea 🇰🇷

Merchant regions

Merchants based in the following countries can accept KakaoPay payments via Checkout.com:

• Hong Kong 🇭🇰
• Singapore (Beta) 🇸🇬
• European Economic Area (Beta) 🇪🇺
• United Kingdom (Beta) 🇬🇧

Supported workflows and services