Kakao partners with Festy for new blockchain services

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South Korean internet corporation giant Kakao has been quite busy in improving and adding to their blockchain service platform over the last week, and that continued on March 26, when it was announced that they would partner on a new blockchain service platform with Irish startup Festy. The agreement reached last week is for the two companies to work together to develop a new blockchain payment and analytics application.

Festy began operations in 2016 as a company providing wristbands that would store payments and ID information at music festivals. This afforded customers the ability to not have to carry either cards or cash with them while they attended events, yet still be able to make purchases and have their information available.

In just one year’s time, the company evolved into a sophisticated organization providing ticketing and payment mechanisms using blockchain technology. This would allow transactions to occur across multiple networks of computers yet still be kept secure. This technology will even extend to clubs and other live venues, allowing customers to check in and out using the Festy ticketing system.

The agreement was first reported on March 23 when an agreement had been reached with a subsidiary of Kakao, Ground X, to help create the blockchain based payment system to be used on the Festy platform. The new Klatyn platform is set to be operational by July of this year and will be privacy oriented for consumers.

Festy founder Graham de Barra explains, “We can allow a more transparent system for these transactions, where the consumer can get remunerated for contributing towards the big data that’s being built around them.”

Kakao has been quite busy recently. On March 19, it was announced that they were starting a new blockchain service platform that would create a series of apps and products available to business clients. This platform would provide the highest level of security and added an automated scaling function as well. This would allow data storage to increase while still protecting that data transfer across various computer networks.

This new push at Kakao came on the heels of a coin offering in February that garnered nearly $90 million from investors. The company had already seen a dramatic increase in profits in the fourth quarter of last year, and the point offering gave them additional revenue to be able to push forward with new blockchain ideas. This included the integration of their KakaoTalk app with its cryptocurrency wallet, enabling users to be able to transfer funds through the app to those who were within their network.