[Edaily Reporter Seong Ga-hyun] A court has ruled that the Personal Information Protection Commission’s (PIPC) decision to impose a fine of approximately 6 billion won on #KakaoPay for leaking the personal information of 40 million users to Alipay was justified.

On the 11th, the 12th Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court (Presiding Judge Kang Jae-won) ruled against Kakao Pay in a lawsuit it filed against the PIPC seeking the revocation of corrective orders and other administrative sanctions.

Previously, in January of last year, the PIPC imposed a corrective order and a fine of 5.96 billion won on KakaoPay after it was found to have provided Alipay with the personal information—including mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and registration dates—of approximately 40.45 million users between June 2019 and May 2024.

The KIPA’s investigation revealed that KakaoPay had provided the information of all its users to help build the “NSF score” calculation model, which Apple had commissioned Alipay to develop. The NSF score is a type of customer-specific score calculated to assess the likelihood of payment defaults among Apple service users.

Kakao Pay contested this decision and filed a lawsuit against the KIP to overturn the ruling.

The court stated on that day, “The consent obtained by Kakao Pay from all users was intended for customer identification, identity verification and authentication, and billing settlement,” adding, “Based on that consent alone, it cannot be deemed that the data subjects specifically and clearly consented to the transfer of their information or its use in the calculation of NSF scores.”

The court further explained, “KakaoPay also transferred information regarding customers who do not use Apple’s services to Alipay,” adding, “Since the process of calculating the NSF score resulted in the nullification of the data subject’s right to control their personal information, it cannot be said that the data subject’s consent was obtained.”