A South Korean court has ruled that the fine of approximately 5.9 billion won imposed on KakaoPay for providing personal data of about 40 million users to China's Alipay without consent is justified.
The Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 12, led by Judge Kang Jae-won, dismissed all claims made by KakaoPay against the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) on June 11.
Last year, the PIPC imposed a corrective order and a fine of 59.6 billion won on KakaoPay, stating that the company had provided personal data of its entire user base to Alipay without consent in January.
An investigation by the PIPC revealed that KakaoPay had shared user information to build a model for calculating the 'NSF score,' which assesses the likelihood of payment failures for Apple service users. The NSF score is a type of customer-specific score.
The court determined that since KakaoPay's user information was transferred to Apple via Alipay, the benefits derived from this data usage belonged to Apple. It noted, "The plaintiff did not obtain consent from the users of the payment service when providing information to Alipay," and emphasized that the users' control over their personal data was undermined in the NSF score calculation, indicating that consent could not be assumed.
Furthermore, the court found that KakaoPay transmitted information not only of Apple users but also of Android users and the entire user base to Alipay, affirming that the fine was legally valid.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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