The recoil retardation effect in the $K^-d$ scattering length is studied. Using the non-relativistic effective field theory approach, it is demonstrated that a systematic perturbative expansion of the recoil corrections in the parameter $xi=M_K/m_N$
is possible in spite of the fact that $K^-d$ scattering at low energies is inherently non-perturbative due to the large values of the $bar KN$ scattering lengths. The first order correction to the $K^-d$ scattering length due to single insertion of the retardation term in the multiple-scattering series is calculated. The recoil effect turns out to be reasonably small even at the physical value of $M_K/m_Nsimeq 0.5$.
