Indonesia E-Wallet Market
Indonesian consumers are very receptive to new products in the digital economy. Growth of the market for fintech products in Indonesia shows an upward trend, evidenced by increases both in terms of transaction value and the number of startups. Recent data released by the Bank of Indonesia show that digital payment transactions for the last three years experienced increases of Rp 56 trillion (2019), Rp 47 trillion (2018) and Rp 12 trillion (2017).
Electronic money or e-Wallet payments are the most popular form of fintech service in Indonesia, followed by web-based investment and pay-later services. Electronic money transactions in Indonesia’s retail market rose by 173% in January 2020 from a year earlier, with nonbank fintech dominating the scene as Indonesia works its way toward a cashless environment. E-money transactions reached Rp 15.8 trillion in January of this year. In Indonesia, the largest digital transactions are coming from retail (28%), online transportation (27%), food order (20%), e-commerce (15%), and bill payments (7%).
As of February 2020, 41 licensed e-Wallet platforms have been approved by Indonesian government regulators; in October 2019 SamsungPay entered the Indonesian market, marking a significant development for a foreign fintech provider. Between 2017 and 2018, digital consumers in Indonesia grew from 64 million to 102 million, almost half the total population in Indonesia. With the growth of digital consumers, online shopping is predicted to increase 3.7 times from USD 13.1 billion in transactions in 2017 to USD 48.3 billion in 2025.
The top 5 e-Wallet platforms in Indonesia based on the number of monthly active users between 2017-2019 were GoPay, OVO, DANA, LinkAja, and Jenius. OVO’s steady growth has largely been backed by its partnership with Grab, Southeast Asia’s largest ride hailing service and Tokopedia, the dominant player in Indonesian online e-commerce market. DANA was introduced in 2018 and managed to boost its popularity and replace LinkAja in third position in Q2 2019. LinkAja already enjoys a convenient position as it integrates payment services provided by state-owned banks, namely Telkomsel’s TCash, Bank Mandiri’s e-cash, BNI’s UnikQu, Telkom’s t-Money, and BRI’s T-Bank. Based on the number of downloads, the top five e-Wallet apps are GoPay, OVO, DANA, LinkAja, and iSAKU.
E-Wallet apps owned by internet-based companies have increased by 50% in the past two years. Four of these companies are among the top 10 e-Wallet apps in Indonesia, including GoPay, DANA, Paytrend, and DOKU. Such growth was encouraged by Indonesia’s regulatorFinancial Services Authority (OJK) in a bid to improve the country’s economic development, as three-quarters of 260 million Indonesian people reportedly still have no access to adequate financial services. Three out of the top 10 most popular e-Wallet apps are owned by banks, namely Jenius from BTPN, Go Mobileby CIMB from CIMB and Sakuku from BCA. For many users, among the attractions of using an e-Wallet apps as a cashless payment method are instant cashback offers and additional points. Merchants claim that cashback promos, which range between 20 to 40%, also can help increase their sales. Among the most common services for e-Wallet apps are offline transactions, e-commerce payments and public transportation.
There are some foreign e-Wallet players who have shown an interest in the Indonesian digital payment market. AliPay, WeChatPay, WhatsApp Pay have eyes on market development. For any foreign player who wants to enter the Indonesian e-Wallet market will have to partner with a local commercial bank categorized as ‘Buku 4’ (BUKU 4 – Bank Umum Kegiatan Usaha). Currently there are seven banks in Indonesia that are categorized as “BUKU 4”: BNI, Mandiri, BRI, BCA, CIMB Niaga, Bank Danamon and Bank Panin for cross border e-Wallet through Bank of Indonesia. Foreign-invested e-Wallet platforms are required to use Indonesian currency with QRIS and they also have to meet Standardization of Open Application Programming Interface.
WeChat Pay is partnering with CIMB Niaga and early in January 2020 received a preliminary license from Bank of Indonesia to do operation in Indonesia. AliPay is set to partner with Bank of Mandiri and BRI but have not yet received approval from Bank of Indonesia. Samsung Electronics Indonesia teamed up with e-wallet Dana and GoPay to provide SamsungPay, an application that will integrate the two e-Wallet services. The platform would improve the customer experience by providing easy access to the digital payment apps through SamsungPay.
For more information, please contact: Yulie Tanuwidjaja (Yulie.Tanuwidjaja@trade.gov)