Too long for a comment. Your requirement is too stringent and it is quite likely that to get continuity from $L^\infty$ into itself, it is indeed necessary to have
$$
\text{esssup}_x\int\vert k(x,y)\vert dy<+\infty.
$$
On the other hand, if you are interested in $L^2$ or $L^p$ continuity, you have a much more interesting question. By the way, no iff condition is known for the $L^2(\mathbb R^N)$ continuity, although you have several quite refined sufficient conditions. For instance, Calder\'on-Zygmund singular integrals and zeroth order pseudo-differential operators are bounded on $L^p(\mathbb R^N)$ for $p\in (1,+\infty)$, but not in general on $L^1$ or $L^\infty$. If you relax your $L^\infty$ requirement and for instance look for $BMO(\mathbb R^N)$ continuity, I believe that singular integrals with odd kernels are indeed bounded on
$BMO(\mathbb R^N)$: to give a simple example, I think that with
$$
k(x,y)=\text{pv}\frac{1}{x-y}=\frac{d}{dx}\bigl(\ln \vert x-y\vert\bigr)
$$
you get an operator which is not bounded on $L^\infty(\mathbb R)$, but is bounded on $BMO(\mathbb R)$.
You can raise also a similar question for the Sobolev continuity, say from $H^s(\mathbb R^N)$ into
$H^{s'}(\mathbb R^N)$.