Operating Policy
The Operating Policy is applied when you use the Kakao Platform Service. Please read through the Operating Policy carefully, since you may experience disadvantages if you fail to comply with the Operating Policy. Kakao has the right to update the Operating Policy. In such an event, Kakao will announce the updates on the Developer Website at least seven (7) days in advance.
The English version is provided for reference purposes, and the legally binding Korean version shall prevail if there are any conflicts between the English and Korean versions.
Chapter 1. Policy on Permission and Restriction of Use
Article 1. Obligation of Service Users
You shall be responsible for the following obligations including the matters set forth in the Terms of Service (i.e., Kakao Business Terms of Service or Kakao Developers Terms of Service).
- You must keep checking version updates on the functions provided by Kakao through the Software Development Kit (SDK) and relevant services.
- You must comply with all of the following items with regard to the protection of personal information in any program you operate. If Kakao becomes aware that you have violated the obligation herein, Kakao may restrict your use of the Service or terminate the relevant service agreement.
- Enter items that match the actual service content, such as the member’s program, on the consent item management screen in the Settings page of the Developers Website.
- Encrypt personal information provided by Kakao when transmitting and receiving it.
- In the case of checking whether to sign up for any programs you operate by utilizing the personal information of users provided by Kakao, you must destroy such information if users do not sign up eventually or within 24 hours.
- Provide a menu to delete an account in your program, and destroy all personal information of users when they delete the account.
- Sincerely comply with the obligations of members under laws and regulations related to the protection of personal information, such as the Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc.
- Before using the service, you must carefully check service application procedures, usage methods, Security Guidelines, and other service details that Kakao guides via Kakao Developers.
- You must establish a sound security system in providing your service that uses Kakao services and prevent any damage from occurring to Kakao, other members, and third parties by attacks from others and alteration and abusing of programs, etc.
Article 2. Permissions and Functions of App
Members shall be able to obtain Biz App[2] permissions by completing personal verification or registering the business information after creating an application[1] (“App”); members may, after obtaining these permissions, use the following functions.
- Edit business information (if applicable)
- Connect an app with the business channel
- Utilize APIs that demand additional permissions. However, members can access these APIs only after applying for extra permissions and obtaining approval from Kakao. The types of APIs necessitating extra permissions and the approval criteria shall be determined by Kakao.
Article 3. Categories Prohibited from Service Use
The following are restricted from using the Service:
- Game application, websites
- Game-related applications, websites (Pre-orders, rewards etc.)
- Virtual asset-related services (Application and websites that provides virtual asset transactions, storage and deposit)
Article 4. Prohibited Contents
As a Kakao Platform Service user, you shall not include any of the following contents in your application program or other websites, in the form of a sign and/or processed contents.
- Contents that infringe on a third party’s rights (ex. copyrights), in accordance with governing laws
- Contents that are in violation with governing laws (Medical Service Act; Act on Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons; Act on Registration of Credit Business, Etc. and Protection of Finance Users; Value-Added Tax Act; Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce, Etc; Indirect Investment Asset Management Business Act; etc).
- Investment product (e.g., stocks, securities) information or services provided by businesses that do not meet the qualifications or requirements stipulated by relevant laws, including quasi-investment advisory businesses and stock investment advisory businesses which are not registered with or reported to the Financial Supervisory Service (e.g., unlicensed stock leading service, consulting service, copy trading, AI automatic trading)
- Contents that are prohibited to minors in accordance with relevant laws including the Youth Protection Act and the Act on the Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, Etc. (Adult broadcasting, adult online communities, adult goods, dating service, etc. However, these contents may be made available following a separate review from Kakao if the service is provided after the user verifies their age and identity using the Kakao Certificate)
- Contents that are excessively profane in nature, including profanities and vulgar slangs
- Contents that are hateful or violent
- Contents that support the discrimination of certain races or ethnic groups
- Contents that support, or are intended to cause computer hacking or cracking
- Gambling service (Sports Toto, gambling/casino, horse racing and cycle racing, motorboat racing, lotto service, etc)
- Services related to tobacco, alcohol, guns and swords. (Provided that services related to e-cigarettes and alcohol may be allowed as an exception, pending Kakao's review, if an adult verification process is provided within the services.)
- Illegal activities that include the illegal transport of controlled substance or illegal software
- Tools for narcotics
- Phishing
- Malicious contents
- Contents that causes inconvenience or harm to Kakao service users, such as endless pop-ups
- Other contents, products and/or services that violates, or encourages the violation of any criminal law, a different governing law, or the rights of any third party
Article 5. Prohibited Activities
Besides the violations and examples of violations specified in this Agreement, you shall not allow any third party, including your end user, to conduct any of the following activities.
- Any of the following activities, including creating or facilitating the creation of unwanted commercial emails (“Spam Email”):
- Send emails that violate applicable Spam Email prevention laws
- Imitate or pretend to be another person, using a false or pretend email address, or creating a false account to send Spam Emails
- Perform data mining any web attributes, including that of the Kakao Platform Services, to find emails or other individual’s account information
- Send unauthenticated emails using an open or third party server
- Send an email to users who has requested to be removed from the mailing list.
- Sell, exchange or distribute an individual’s email address to a third party without that individual’s knowledge or consent
- Send large quantities of emails to individuals, organizations or businesses you are not associated with.
- Send, upload, distribute, spread contents of illegal, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, infringing, obscene and/or offensive nature, or conduct activities with intentions to do so
- Intentionally distribute destructive or fraudulent items, including viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, destroyed files and tricks
- Participate in a pyramid scheme or similar activities
- Send harmful contents to minors
- Impersonate a different person (by using their email or through other activities) or deceive others by modifying your email address or any other email address
- Illegally send intellectual properties or other exclusive information without the owner or license provider’s consent
- Use Kakao Platform Services while infringing on other people’s legal rights (for example, personal information protection or the right to privacy)
- Promote or encourage illegal activities
- Interrupt other users from using the Kakao Platform Service
- Sell, trade or resell Kakao Platform Services for unauthorized commercial purposes
- Edit, adapt, modify or reverse engineering any parts of the Kakao Platform Service
- Delete any notification of copyrights, trademarks or other ownership that is included in the Kakao Platform Service
- Reformat or reconfigure the webpage, or any parts of the webpage, that is associated with the Kakao Platform Service’s admin screen
- Use the Kakao Platform Service to illegally share peer-to-peer files
- Post hateful, loathing or violent contents or including contents, products and/or services that violate or encourage the violation of any criminal law, legal provisions or third party’s rights in the Kakao Platform Service
- Modify Kakao’s logo or any Kakao symbols and markings
- Use the Kakao Platform Service and/or interfaces provided in the Kakao Platform Service with methods that violate terms and conditions of Kakao’s products and/or services, other terms and conditions or conditions needed to use the products or services, in order to access Kakao’s product and/or service.
- Cause a third party’s service to be misrecognized as a Kakao service or a Kakao partnering service (for example, by adding “for Kakao”)
- Cache data Kakao provided for purposes other than improving user’s environment in the app, or failing to retain the data with the most recently updated data
- Falsely enter or differently compose parameters required to use the service, namely developer account profile (i.e., name, email address, etc.), application/service information (i.e., service name, icon, site domain, package name, market URL, bundle ID, etc.) and the like (including but not limited to cases where the past information is maintained without modification even though it has been changed; where the shortened link is used for fraudulent purposes after URL shortener registration or any other similar cases)
- Display a different company name in the Biz App from the business name entered in the business information section when registering the Biz App, register false information about the business, or obtain personal verification in an improper way
- Create and operate multiple Developer Website accounts or applications for the same single service
- Any service that uses the same package information and bundle ID, and composes a platform that includes the same website domain is considered to be the same service
- Enter false information about the member’s Application when subscribing to the Kakao Platform Service or failing to abide by related laws and government guidelines during operation (Example: The Application’s terms and conditions that was entered for easy subscription does not correspond with the service contents or objective, or updates and operations were not conducted in accordance with related laws and government guidelines)
- Post content in lieu of users without their consent
- Use the service for the main purpose of redirecting users from services operated by Kakao, including Kakao Talk, to external services
- Mention the relationship with Kakao to the media or users without obtaining prior approval from the Company (including but not limited to the official press release, web posting, etc.)
- Notify or mislead the media or users that Kakao is related to an error even though the error occurs in the services operated by the member for reasons unrelated to Kakao services
- Cause any inconvenience or damage to the Company or members’ service users with your service (including cases that occur in members’ service connected via the service)
- Copy, reproduce, change, translate, publish, broadcast, type into a search engine or directory, or provid to others information (including but not limited to data, secret key, access token, etc.) obtained through the service and Kakao Developers, without prior consent of the Company
- Use the service in excess of the provision limit outlined in Article 6 (i.e., daily quota, monthly quota, MAU limit);however, the daily quota may be exceeded when using paid services.
Article 6. Quota and Limits
Kakao has limits (hard and soft) to service use. Hard limits are automatically placed by the Kakao Platform Service. Soft limits are resources that can be consumed within a determined quota, of which you agree not to exceed.
- Request length: 30 seconds or less – Hard
- MAU: Over 500,000 users – Hard
- Daily total API calls exceed 10 million requests - Hard
- Network bandwidth: 2TB/Month - Soft
- API requests – The API list and the number of requests(quotas) are determined in the separate guide - Soft
Article 7. Handling of Long-Term Unused Apps
If your registered app has not requested for more than six(6) months in a row, Kakao may delete information of the app registered in your membership information to ensure service stability after a separate notification.
Article 8. Restriction of Use
Kakao may gradually limit your rights to use the Service, through warnings, data deletion requests, temporary suspensions (including limiting developer and app’s access to Platform features), the termination of the use agreement, etc. if you violate obligations defined in the Terms of Service and the Operating Policy, or interrupt the normal operations of the Service. Provided however that Kakao may immediately terminate the Service use agreement if you violate Paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 of this Operating Policy.
Chapter 2. Technical Support
Article 9. Basic Principle of Technical Support
Kakao provides application programs that use the Kakao Platform Service (official SDK and API) with free technical support in limited formats. However, Kakao does not guarantee response time and limits technical support to the following scope, time, contacts and channels to provide the optimum support possible.
Article 10. Scope
The scope of technical support that is provided is as follows:
Installation and Setting Issues
- Provide support on installing and setting SDKs for supported application programs
- Provide optimum sample guide for settings on supported application programs
- Answer general questions about SDK and API
Troubleshooting
- Provide guidance on how to avoid or resolve known issues
- Provide answers and links with helpful documents on general “how-to” questions
- Troubleshoot errors or abnormal actions in features provided in the Kakao Platform Service that are unrelated to the user’s application program code
Technical Support that is Not Provided
Kakao’s technical support service is not provided in the following:
- General debugging of user’s application program
- Re-writing application program codes to make compatible with the Kakao Platform Service
- Updating or patching a third party or open source software package to make compatible with the Kakao Platform Service.
Kakao does not provide paid consultations or specialized service programs. However, Kakao is more than happy to connect our customers with one of our consulting partners. For more information, please refer to the Kakao Partners website, where you can submit a simple description of your requests.
Article 11. Who the Support is Provided to and How to Request Support
The limited, free technical support service is provided to all registered users of the Kakao Platform Service. Request for support shall only be provided for the following:
- Requests that are made through one of the supported channels (See details below)
- Inquiries made through a registered Kakao Account email address
- Collaborators that can access application programs that use Kakao Platform Service’s features, and is associated with the inquiry.
Article 12. Provided Community Channels
Community channels are offered to allow users to discuss about issues. The following are community channels where Kakao team members participate actively:
DevTalk: Kakao Developer Forum
Kakao Team members may participate in the community channel at their discretion, but the response time for issues that need support cannot be guaranteed.
Article 13. Support Time
Kakao provides support nine (9) hours a day, five (5) times a week. Support is provided from 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. (KST, Korea Standard Time), on Monday to Friday (excluding holidays). Requests for support can be submitted anytime.
Kakao Platform Service is monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Please refer to Article 10 for more information on consistent monitoring.
Article 14. Consistent Monitoring
The Kakao Platform Service is monitored 24-7 using an automated system. If an issue that affects the status, activities or operation of Kakao’s infrastructure, core system or tools occurs, notification is sent to a dedicated team, which immediately responds to diagnose and resolve the issue. This 24-7 monitoring system is applied to all Kakao Platform Services, including premium and free Services, for the benefit of all Kakao Platform Service users.
Whenever an issue arises in the Platform Service, a notification will be immediately posted on the status page of the Developer Website in order to share the impact and the status of the issue. Please do not submit a separate inquiry through the community channels specified in Article 8 if the issue in the Platform Service persists. Visit the status page for updates on the issue and information on efforts being made to resolve the issue.
Article 15. Premium Support
Please first leave your inquiry in the DevTalk. Contact the Kakao Partners website for any questions on premium support for features that are not provided in the Kakao Platform Service.
Article 16. Paid API Services
Kakao may provide some APIs as paid services. The use of paid API services shall be governed by "Chapter 2. Provision of Paid Services" under the Kakao Developers Terms of Service, and according to the description of the policy for paid services on the developer website.
Chapter 3. Trademark Usage Guideline
Article 17. Applying the Trademark Usage Guideline
Provisions in this Chapter shall be applied to the unauthorized use of Kakao trademarks when providing products or services developed with the Kakao Platform Service.
Article 18. Requirements when Using Trademarks
① Use the Kakao trademark only on descriptions that are provided to describe the characteristics of products or services that were developed using the Kakao Platform Service.
② Include the superscript registered trademark symbol “®” after the Kakao trademark if you wish to use the trademark.
③ Do not modify the Kakao trademark, or combine it with other trademarks when using the Kakao trademark.
④ Do not use the Kakao trademark in the name of the Application that was developed with the Kakao Platform Service, it’s icon or product name, service name, company name, logo, and/or symbols. (e.g.) “Camera for Kakao Talk”, “Camera for Kakao”, “Kakao Camera”, using the talk bubble logo (with or without “TALK”) in the app icon.
⑤ Do not include phrases that may mislead or confuse users into believing that Kakao is directly operating the Application, or providing the Application through an agreement or partnership with Kakao, in the Application, market, webpage or other advertisements. (e.g.) This app was developed under a technical partnership with Kakao.
⑥ Do not use the trademark as shown below, in the Application, market, webpage or other advertisements, since it may harm the distinctiveness or reputation of the Kakao trademark.
- Use the Kakao trademark as a common noun
- Display the Kakao trademark on products and/or services that provide adult content
- Display the Kakao trademark on gambling products and/or services
- Display the Kakao trademark on products and/or services that defame, infringe on, slander and/or damage Kakao or other’s reputation
- Display the Kakao trademark on products and/or services that violate other related laws.
⑦ You and/or a third party shall not use any Kakao trademarks, regardless of the provisions provided in the guideline, if you personally, or through a third party, have the potential to defame the reputation of Kakao’s products and/or services, or infringe on Kakao’s business rights.
⑧ Please visit DevTalk(Kakao Developer Forum) for any inquiries on how to properly use the trademark.
Chapter 4. Others
Article 19. Effective Date
① This Operating Policy shall become effective on December 1, 2024. However, the Operating Policy shall be applied to new members on the day they subscribe to the Service if they subscribe between the Terms and Conditions revision announcement date and one (1) day prior to the effective date.
② 3. Virtual asset-related services, which are defined in the subparagraph of Article 3. Categories Prohibited from Service Use, shall become effective on November 20, 2022, despite the Paragraph above.
View the previous Operating Policy.
[1] “Application” refers to the member's application, program or website collectively for which the member intends to apply the Kakao Platform Service.
[2] “Biz App” refers to an application in which the business information is registered or the personal authentication is completed.