On June 15, two of Korea's largest brokerages made the same bet on the same day: that the cheapest way to reach retail savers is to rent the audience of Kakao's consumer apps rather than build their own.
Korea Investment & Securities, one of the country's largest brokerages by equity capital, said it had launched a recurring "installment issued note" service inside the app of KakaoBank (035720.KS), Korea's largest internet-only bank. The feature automatically buys an issued note on a chosen date each month. It carries a one-year term and a pre-tax annual yield of 4.35% as of June 15, with monthly contributions ranging from ₩100,000 (USD73) to ₩10 million (USD7,300), according to Korea Investment & Securities' announcement carried by Digital Today and Asia Business Daily. Any holder of a KakaoBank-partnered Korea Investment BanKIS brokerage account — BanKIS is the firm's online-trading brand — can open one account per person through the app.
Why the product matters more than the press release
Issued notes (발행어음) are not an off-the-shelf product. They are short-term promissory notes that only "mega-IBs" — brokerages with equity capital above ₩4 trillion (USD2.9 billion) and a dedicated short-term-financing license — are allowed to sell, and the license lets a firm issue notes up to 200% of its equity capital. That franchise is the heart of the story. Korea Investment & Securities was the first and, at the time, only firm of five designated mega-IBs to win the license, in November 2017, per contemporaneous regulatory coverage and a later review by SisaON. The book it built on that license is large: its issued-note balance grew from ₩8.4 trillion (USD6.1 billion) at the end of 2021 to ₩17.6 trillion (USD12.8 billion) as of March 31, 2025 — the biggest among the mega-IBs, according to SisaON. Putting that high-margin funding product on monthly autopilot inside a 20-million-user app is a distribution move, not a new product.
The platform is the point. KakaoBank's monthly active users surpassed 20 million at the end of 2025, and the bank has said it is targeting 30 million users by 2027, according to Seoul Economic Daily. Embedding a recurring savings flow there gives the brokerage a low-cost acquisition channel for the kind of sticky balances it would otherwise spend heavily to win.
NH makes the same wager on pensions
The same day, NH Investment & Securities (005940.KS), the brokerage arm of agricultural-cooperative financial group NongHyup, said its KakaoTalk channel "NH Investment Pension" had passed 60,000 subscribers — the most of any brokerage pension channel on KakaoTalk, Korea's dominant messaging app, per the firm's June 15 statement reported by Yonhap. The channel pushes monthly investment guides and market-strategy content to pension customers. Where Korea Investment & Securities is using KakaoBank to capture deposits, NH is using KakaoTalk to keep long-duration pension assets engaged.
The open question
Neither firm disclosed how much money has actually flowed through these Kakao channels — the variable that would show whether platform distribution is moving the needle or merely generating headlines. The next read comes from the brokerages' own numbers: Korea Investment & Securities' future issued-note balance updates, and any KakaoBank disclosure of partner-product volumes in its next quarterly report. Until then, the June 15 announcements confirm the strategy without yet sizing the payoff.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Korean won amounts are converted at approximately ₩1,370 to the US dollar. Readers should conduct their own research before making any investment decision.
Sources
- https://view.asiae.co.kr/article/2026061514361453114
- https://www.hankyung.com/article/2026061570546
- https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260615143000008
- https://view.asiae.co.kr/article/2026061517280212193
- https://www.digitaltoday.co.kr/en/view/63415/korea-investment-securities-launches-installment-issued-note-service-in-kakaobank-app
- https://www.asiae.co.kr/en/article/stock-etc/2026061514361453114
- https://www.sisaon.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=171632
- https://www.sidae.com/article/2017111316278034884
- https://en.sedaily.com/finance/2026/05/03/kakaobank-targets-30-million-users-via-ai-global-push
