Kakao Mobility announced on the 27th that it has expanded the "k.ride" service countries, which have been only available to foreigners visiting Korea since its launch in June last year, to the U.S., Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Saudi Arabia. Users can easily use various ride-hailing services linked to major local mobility companies when traveling abroad with just one K-Ride app.
K-Ride is a global mobility platform exclusively for foreigners introduced by Kakao Mobility for the first time.
The advantage is that it is easy to sign up with a Google/Apple account or email authentication after entering a phone number, and it provides a function to automatically translate more than 100 languages such as English, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Arabic when searching for destinations and chatting with articles, thereby minimizing language barriers.
In addition, it introduced an overseas simple payment function as well as automatic payment through overseas issuance cards to enhance convenience of payment. Since its launch, it has provided calling services such as Kakao T Blue, Venti, Black, and Model Taxis to foreign travelers from more than 100 countries who have visited Korea so far. As a result, the number of taxi calls in Korea exceeded 600,000 as of this month, and the cumulative number of downloads from app stores in more than 100 countries around the world also exceeded 600,000.
58% of K-Ride users were from China, Japan, the United States, Taiwan, and Singapore. Kakao Mobility promotes service advancement for foreign travelers visiting Korea through data accumulated in K-Ride.
This globalization strategy will continue to be led by Kakao Mobility CEO Ryu Geung-sun, who has succeeded in serving a second term. Kakao Mobility approved CEO Ryu's one-year second term at a general shareholders' meeting held on the 25th.
CEO Ryu said, "We will continue to upgrade our global mobility platform so that anyone anywhere in the world can conveniently use mobility services through K-Ride."
[Reporter Kim Tae Sung]
