kakao developers

Design your service

This document explains the things you need to consider when you design your service before adopting Kakao Sync.

For the successful use of Kakao Sync, it is important to optimize the features that Kakao Sync provides. The main features of Kakao Sync are as follows:

Feature	Description
Use a wide range of user information	You can set more various user information such as a shipping address to 'Required consent' or 'Optional consent' as well as default user information.
Simple Signup	Allow users to sign up with their Kakao Accounts by consenting to Terms of Service, instead of asking them to input their personal information.
Advanced features connected to Kakao Business Solution	You can use Kakao Marketing Solutions more effectively such as Kakao Talk Channel, Kakao Bizboard, Chatbot.

Manage user accounts

Creating an account

When a user attempts Kakao Login in your service for the first time, the user's account is linked with your app through the Kakao Sync Simple Signup. The Kakao Sync Simple Signup allows users to consent to the followings:

• Providing user information
• Terms of service
• Add Kakao Talk Channel

Thus, configure each consent item in your service to receive user information and consent required to sign up and use the service.

You must fully understand the difference between linking and creating an account by referring to Kakao Login > Understand concepts for more details.

While the link between your app and Kakao Account is processed on the Kakao platform, the signup process to register as a new member with Kakao Account should be processed in the service database. Be sure that Kakao API just passes the result in response to your request or processes the information, not access your service data.

Thus, we recommend recognizing which information your service needs and compare it with what Kakao Sync provides. If Kakao Sync does not provide the information you need, collect it when a user signs up or uses related services. However, this might cause a user to quit the signup process for the inconvenience, so collect the optional information only when your service needs.

Terminating the account

The service that adopts Kakao Sync must handle these cases: A: If a user deletes the service account B: If a user deletes the Kakao Account C: If a user unlinks from the service

For the A case, you must delete the user information in the service DB and request to unlink to the Kakao platform. Otherwise, the Kakao platform considers the user is still using the service.

For the B and C cases, you must recognize the changes and take action. When you set an unlink callback, you will get notified when a user unlinks from a service so that you can deregister the user from the service.

User Information

To optimize Kakao Sync, you should figure out which user information your service can use throughout your service as well as for the signup process. After identifying which user information is provided by Kakao Sync, specify the user information when applying Kakao Sync.

Since this document only covers the type of user information, refer to Kakao Login > User information in the development stage for more details.

Default user information

You can get the following user information without an extra review process.

• Service user ID is provided without setting consent item. This ID is issued when a user selects [Accept and Continue] when logging in with Kakao. You can send a targeted message based on the service user IDs.
• The low-level consent items of Profile — 'Nickname', 'Profile image', 'Thumbnail image' — can be set to 'Required consent' or 'Optional consent' as needed. Even after you set Kakao Login to ON, you must set the consent type of 'Profile' because it is not set automatically. If your app is using 'Profile Info(nickname/profile image)', you can request to change the scope to 'Nickname' and/or 'Profile image' in DevTalk.
• In the app that applies Kakao Sync, you can set the 'Name', 'Birth year', 'Birthday', 'Gender', 'Age range', and 'Shipping address' scope to 'Optional Consent' without a review process.

Name (Scope ID)	Description	Default Consent Type
Service user ID (id)	A unique identifier for a service to identify a user.	Required
Nickname	Nickname.	Required
Profile image (profile_image)	A URL of profile image.	Required
Thumbnail image (thumbnail_image )	A URL of profile image thumbnail.	Required
Email (account_email)	Representative email.	Required
Name (name)	Name of Kakao Account.	Optional
Phone number(phone_number)	Phone number.	Required
Kakao Talk Channel addition status and details(plusfriends)	The relationship between a user and a Kakao Talk Channel.	Required
Birthday (birthday)	Birthday.	Optional
Gender (gender)	Gender.	Optional
Age range (age_range)	The age range such as under 14, above 14, 20s, or 30s.	Optional
Shipping information (shipping_address)	Recipient name, shipping address, phone number.	Optional

User information that requires a review

Here are the user information that requires a review to set it to 'Required consent'.

• To set the following user information to 'Required Consent', you must request a review for provision of personal information in Kakao Business Admin Center.
• After the review passes, you can change its consent type by referring to configure consent items.
• In the case of 'Friends List in Kakao Service', you can set it to 'Consent during use' without a review process. To set it to 'Required Consent' or 'Optional Consent', request permission in DevTalk.

Name (Scope ID)	Description
Name (name)	Name of Kakao Account.
Birth Year (birthyear)	Birth year.
Birthday (birthday)	Birthday.
Gender (gender)	Gender.
Age range (age_range)	The age range such as under 14, above 14, 20s, or 30s.
Shipping information (shipping_address)	Recipient name, shipping address, phone number.
CI (account_ci)	An encoded identifier to check if the same user has already been collected in the membership database.

Design terms and policies

Kakao Sync allows you to get user consent to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service all at once through the Simple Signup Consent screen. To use this feature, you must request permission in Kakao Business through a review. After a review is passed, you can register Terms of Service in Kakao Developers. You also need to apply additional changes to the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, or Operating Policy when you apply Kakao Sync to your service.

Here is what you need to register:

Name	Description
Terms of Service	Consists of 'Required' and 'Optional' items. Register URLs in which the whole terms can be checked.
Privacy Policy	A policy of collecting, storing, and destroying personal information that users have provided to use the service.
Set service age	Decide whether to allow users under 14 to use the service.

If your service does not allow the children under 14 to sign up, you can add a term to allow only the users who are 14 or older. According to user information, the scenario works as follows.

Case	Result
If users are considered as children under 14	Unable to log in and sign up.
If Kakao does not retain user's age range information	Allow only users who select the 'I am 14 years or older' option on the Consent screen to sign up.

If the age range is not saved in the user's account, the user under 14 can sign up when selecting the option as above. If the service has to allow only the users who are 14 or older to sign up according to the Operating Policy, set 'CI(Connecting Information)' to 'Required Item' to check the user's age range using the CI.

Design user scenarios

When you design the user scenarios after adopting for Kakao Sync, you need to consider how users access your service and member status to provide a natural and convenient flow for users and meet your service's purpose.

Kakao Sync provides a set of features that extend the Kakao Login, as well as the Simple Signup feature. You can take advantage of Kakao Sync with the extra features, such as events for signup, channel messages, biz messages and QR code. Users also can access your service by QR code more easily rather than through mobile or web pages.

Users can access the service that adopts Kakao Sync through various platforms such as the Kakao Talk Channel connected to your service, chatbots, Kakao Link chat bubbles, #(Sharp) Search, and Kakao Bizboard.

When designing user scenarios, you may need to customize a landing page for users who logged in from the Kakao Talk in-app browse through Auto Login.

Map existing members

Your service must register users who are linked with your service through the Kakao Sync Simple Signup in your membership database. For the users who have previously been registered before adopting Kakao Sync, you need to map the user accounts with the existing user accounts or register them as new members.

For user's convenience, we recommend allowing users to log in with the existing user information through Kakao Login. You can check if Kakao retains the user information of the new users by using some unique user information such as ci, phone number, or email. Here is a scenario to map with the registered user information.

• Notify a user of the registered status and ask the user to log in with Kakao using the existing account.
  • If a user agrees to link with the existing account, add the Kakao Account information to the existing user information and allow the user to log in with Kakao using the existing account.
  • If a user does not agree to link with the existing account, add the user account in the membership database as a new member.

Registerd Kakao Login users

If a user uses Kakao Login before adopting Kakao Sync to your service, you can change the user to a Kakao Sync user through a service user ID. In this case, you must get additional consent from the existing users using Kakao Login as well as new users through the Kakao Sync Consent screen.

If the service user ID same as the existing service user ID is passed, you need to update the user information to the information provided by Kakao Sync, considering the user has already been signed up through Kakao Login.

Use information provided by Kakao

After checking if the user information has already been registered in the service database, you can map the user with the existing information. Generally, you can sync based on CI of Kakao Account, but you can also refer to the phone number, email, or birthday if you do not collect CI.

CASE 1: User information matches CASE 2: Some user information matches CASE 3: No user information is matched

Providing 'Linking with my account' option

Some users who actively use your service may want to link the service accounts to their Kakao Accounts. Other users who use the service with other social media accounts may wish to link the accounts to the Kakao Account. For these cases, provide the '소셜 계정 연동 기능(Linking a social media account)' option in your service to link their accounts to Kakao Accounts through Kakao Sync.

Here is a flow to classify users when linking the Kakao Sync users with the existing user information in the service. Basically, all policies and processes related to managing users are determined by the service, but this flowchart would be helpful to manage users to provide them with a smooth and convenient signup process and use of the service.

Cautions when handling existing members

Make sure the followings when linking the existing user information and Kakao Account information:

• Even though user information completely matches the existing user information, ask the user if the account information is the user's and proceeds to link the account. Some users may not want to link their accounts with Kakao Accounts, or user information may not belong to the user.
• Consider that the personal information provided by Kakao Sync can be changed when designing and developing your service. Users may change their personal information such as birthday and gender in the account at any time and delete the connection information (CI) value in Kakao Account if necessary. Or new information that is not passed when signing up may be passed additionally when a user logs in.

Review what to integrate

You can use not only Kakao Sync but also various Kakao services or APIs, including Kakao Login that is an essential feature for Kakao Sync Simple Signup to provide more convenient services.

The main Kakao services and APIs are as follows. Before developing Kakao Sync service, it is recommended to review what you can integrate into the service.

Name	Description
Kakao Talk Channel	Sends the service news to users who added your Kakao Talk Channel through Kakao Talk.
Kakao Pay	Simple payment service with various payment methods such as Kakao Pay. A partnership is required.
Kakao Map	Provides South Korea's map and location information.
Kakao Login	Provides a social login feature to use various services with Kakao Account.
Kakao Link	Allows users to share texts, images, or videos through Kakao Talk messages.
Kakao Talk Friend information	Retrieves friends of Kakao Talk linked with a Kakao Account. Only the same service app users are provided.
Send message in Kakao Talk	Sends Kakao Talk messages through Kakao Talk linked with the Kakao Account in the template designated by a service. Sending auto-messages is not supported.
Push Notification	Sends a push notification to a Kakao Account user.