Cancel Emoticon Plus and Switch to Kakao Membership? — Doing the Math on ₩4,900 a Month

Tech Explainer October 16, 2026

Kakao Membership, launched by Kakao on October 1, 2026, costs ₩4,900 a month and includes a benefit where you choose either Emoticon Plus or 130GB of Talk Cloud each month. Even for the same Emoticon Plus, moving to Kakao Membership can lower or raise your monthly fee depending on where you currently pay.

Icons of services linked to Kakao Membership — Source: Kakao

What Kakao Membership includes

Kakao Membership summary from Kakao’s press release — Source: Kakao

Kakao Membership is Kakao’s first membership, bundling Gift, Talk Deal, Kakao Pay, Melon, Kakao Page, emoticons, Talk Cloud, non-life insurance, and securities into one subscription. The monthly fee is ₩4,900, the same as Naver Plus Membership.

Category	Details	Note
Content benefit	Emoticon Plus or 130GB Talk Cloud	Choose one each month
Shopping rewards	0.5–5% on Gift and Talk Deal	Up to 20,000 points a month
Pay rewards	0.5–2% on Pay Money payments	Up to 50,000 points a month
Sign-up bonus	₩4,900 worth of Korean stocks	Once
Sign-up bonus	₩6,000 in Melon cash	Once
Practical benefit	2,000 Kakao Page cash	Per press release
Practical benefit	Cracked screen coverage	Up to ₩70,000

On the securities side, it gives cashback on Korean stock sell commissions up to ₩4,900, and you can subscribe to Melon Streaming Lite at a discount. Users under 19 get a ₩5,000 Olive Young discount coupon instead of stocks.

Kakao said that, citing initial stabilization, it’s accepting only small first-come, first-served sign-ups, that adding the KakaoTalk channel Kakao Membership as a friend sends you a sign-up notification, and that it will expand eligibility in stages. When sign-up is available, you can also join from More > Settings in KakaoTalk.

Monthly cost math for Emoticon Plus users

Chart comparing Emoticon Plus monthly fees by payment channel — Source: self-rendered from the Kakao Emoticon Shop, App Store, and Kakao press release

The Kakao Emoticon Shop product page shows ₩3,900 a month, 20% off the ₩4,900 list price, while the in-app purchase list for the KakaoTalk app on the iPhone App Store shows ₩6,900 a month. Kakao also described the Emoticon Plus it offers as a membership benefit as worth ₩3,900.

If you pay in the iPhone app

If you’ve been paying ₩6,900 through the App Store, switching to Kakao Membership at ₩4,900 a month cuts your monthly fee by ₩2,000. That’s ₩24,000 a year, and you also get the rewards and cash benefits.

If you pay ₩3,900 in the Emoticon Shop

If you pay through the Emoticon Shop and move to the membership, you pay ₩1,000 more a month. To offset that extra ₩1,000 with shopping rewards, you’d need to buy ₩100,000 worth a month on Gift and Talk Deal at a 1% reward rate, or ₩20,000 worth if you only buy 5% reward items. If you use Gift once or twice a month, rewards alone are unlikely to exceed ₩1,000, and only by adding the sign-up bonus of ₩4,900 in stocks and ₩6,000 in Melon cash do you come out ahead for the first few months.

Side by side with Naver Plus Membership

Item	Kakao Membership	Naver Plus Membership
Monthly fee	₩4,900	₩4,900
Content choice	Emoticon Plus, Talk Cloud	Netflix with ads, etc.
Shopping rewards	Gift, Talk Deal	Naver Shopping

Naver Plus Membership comes to ₩3,900 a month with an annual pass. Whether you use KakaoTalk emoticons every day, and whether you watch Netflix, are the real criteria for choosing between them.

What to check before canceling

Original Emoticon Plus cancellation and refund notice — Source: Kakao

The cancellation and refund rules for Emoticon Plus are written out in the product notice on the Kakao Emoticon Shop.

[Cancel only where you paid] For Kakao payments, My Subscriptions > Subscription Info or my.kakao.com; for App Store payments, the Subscriptions menu in iPhone Settings

[Full refund if unused within 7 days] If you haven’t sent a single emoticon within 7 days of your first paid charge, you get a full refund through withdrawal of the subscription

[Mid-term cancellation refunds minus usage] The refund is the payment minus the amount used, with usage judged from emoticon sending records

[Leaving KakaoTalk alone doesn’t cancel the subscription] The subscription is tied to your Kakao Account, so recurring billing continues even if you leave KakaoTalk

[Favorites disappear] When your use ends, records such as favorited emoticons are deleted immediately and may not be recoverable

Refunds for subscriptions paid through the App Store are handled by Apple, not Kakao. Kakao’s customer center help also says Apple in-app purchases can only be refunded through Apple’s website or iTunes. After you request cancellation, you can use the period already paid for until the next billing date, when the subscription ends.

Order for switching to the membership

The Emoticon Plus product page in the Kakao Emoticon Shop — Source: Kakao

Kakao’s press release doesn’t say how existing Emoticon Plus subscribers move to the membership. Some outlets wrote that a product you already subscribe to can’t be chosen as a membership benefit, but this hasn’t been confirmed by a Kakao notice. So it’s safer to follow an order that avoids paying for two months at once.

① Add the KakaoTalk channel Kakao Membership as a friend and wait for the sign-up notification ② On the sign-up screen, check the conditions for choosing the content benefit and your first billing date ③ Cancel your existing Emoticon Plus where you paid for it (for App Store payments, schedule the cancellation before the next billing date) ④ Join the membership on the day your Emoticon Plus subscription expires and choose Emoticon Plus as your content benefit

On the membership side too, once you’ve received the sign-up bonus, withdrawal may be restricted even within 7 days. The Emoticon Plus notice also includes a clause that withdrawal is restricted once digital content delivery begins, so open the membership’s cancellation and refund notice before you join. Support is handled by option 2 (My Subscriptions, Kakao Membership recurring billing and cancellation) on Kakao customer center ARS 1577-3754.

Summary

Summary card for deciding whether to switch to Kakao Membership — Source: summary of this post, self-rendered