Kakao's taxi chauffeur service expands to Japan
Kakao Mobility, the transportation service affiliate of Kakao, said its taxi-hailing app Kakao T will be able to call Japanese taxis, starting on Thursday.
The company is collaborating with Japan's largest mobile cab service Japan Taxi which has around 70,000 registered cabs in its fleet.
Users only need the update that is rolling out on Thursday to call taxis in Japan. With the new update, Kakao T users visiting Japan will not need to download a separate app, and the app's home screen will automatically change its geolocation to Japan.
The new update will also provide an automatic chat translation function so that South Koreans can communicate with Japanese taxi drivers.
Korean users, however, will be charged an extra roaming fee besides the cab fare.
Kakao Mobility and Japan Taxi are also preparing to launch a counterpart service next year that will allow Japanese consumers to do the same when they visit South Korea.
Kakao Mobility last year re-branded its cab calling service from KakaoTaxi to Kakao T and said it will incorporate more transportation services into the app.
In South Korea, consumers can also use the app to find nearby parking spaces that are available.
Kakao is also incorporating AI to various different services, including transportation.
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