[Edaily Reporter Lee So-hyun] Lee Hae-jin, Chairman of Naver (#NAVER), paid for the meal using Naver Pay during a pork belly dinner with Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. This gathering between a global artificial intelligence (AI) industry heavyweight and the heads of major domestic companies served as a demonstration of Naver Pay’s strategy to expand its offline payment services.

According to the IT industry on the 5th, CEO Jensen Huang, who returned to Korea for the first time in seven months, held a dinner featuring pork belly and soju starting at 7 p.m. that day at “Hyungnim Jeoyo,” a barbecue restaurant near Hongdae in Mapo-gu, Seoul, with Naver Chairman Lee Jae-jin, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, and others.

This gathering serves as a follow-up to the so-called “Kanbu Meeting” held last October, when CEO Jensen Huang dined on chicken and beer with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun at a Kanbu Chicken restaurant in Samseong-dong, Seoul.

What caught the eye that day was the payment scene after the dinner. The restaurant is a franchise equipped with “Naver Pay Connect,” operated by Naver Financial, a financial subsidiary of Naver, and Chairman Lee paid with Naver Pay after the meal. Naver, which is competing with Toss in the domestic offline mobile payment market, created a scene more impactful than any advertisement simply by having its payment service featured during CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to Korea, which drew global attention.

In particular, Chairman Lee utilized the “FaceSign” feature—the facial recognition payment service of the Naver Pay Connect terminal. Instead of pulling out a credit card, Chairman Lee simply looked at the Naver Pay Connect terminal, and the payment was completed in just one second. CEO Huang, who watched Chairman Lee make the payment from the side, put his arm around him and exclaimed, “Oh!” Later, CEO Huang told reporters, “Chairman Lee paid for everyone’s meal,” adding, “It came to a lot (so much).”

It was also unusual for Chairman Lee, who is often called a “reclusive CEO” due to his infrequent public appearances, to make a personal appearance at this dinner. As the founder of Naver and chairman of the board, Chairman Lee has led the major strategies of “Team Naver,” but he has kept his public exposure to a minimum. The fact that Chairman Lee, who typically avoids the public eye, appeared at a public gathering alongside Jensen Huang—CEO of a company leading the global AI semiconductor market—and the heads of major domestic conglomerates, even demonstrating a Naver Pay transaction in person, indicates that this meeting was utilized not merely as a social gathering but as a platform for strategic messaging.

This scene goes beyond mere behind-the-scenes gossip; it is also intertwined with Naver’s push into the offline payment market. Last November, Naver Pay unveiled its own terminal, Naver Pay Connect. As an integrated terminal that processes credit cards and mobile payments, it is a key device Naver Pay is promoting to expand its reach from online payments to offline stores.

Naver is building a structure that goes beyond simple payment fees by connecting to the existing Naver ecosystem—including Naver Maps, Smart Place, reviews, coupons, and membership programs—to integrate store operations and customer retention. Since last March, the company has been promoting the installation of Naver Pay Connect in approximately 4,000 supermarkets nationwide, and it is scheduled to be introduced to about 3,500 Paris Baguette stores nationwide in the second half of this year.

Chairman Lee used CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea as an opportunity to highlight not only AI cooperation but also Naver’s presence in fintech. In particular, in the AI era, the value of data on visits, payments, and repeat visits generated in physical stores is growing alongside that of online search data. An industry insider stated, “Offline payment terminals are not merely cash registers but data touchpoints that track users’ daily movements,” adding, “Naver’s move to integrate payment data with its search, maps, reviews, and reservations can be seen as part of its strategy to secure lifestyle data in the AI era.”

Meanwhile, CEO Jensen Huang is also scheduled to visit Naver’s second headquarters, “1784,” located in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on the 8th. 1784 is regarded as a state-of-the-art facility that integrates Naver’s future technologies, including robotics, cloud computing, and digital twins. Following the dinner, where he will have the opportunity to build rapport with Chairman Lee and other leaders of major domestic companies, he plans to use the visit to 1784 as an official platform to solidify cooperation between Naver and NVIDIA on AI infrastructure.