After a long delay, Indonesia’s state-owned mobile payment platform LinkAja was officially launched yesterday in Jakarta.
Formed from a consortium of state-owned enterprises, LinkAja currently offers a variety of payment transaction features and says it services more than 150.000 merchants and enables cashless payments for over 400 digital products. The LinkAja wallet is already integrated with 20 e-commerce sites and apps, including the country’s biggest platforms Tokopedia and Bukalapak. In addition, customers of banks that are integrated with LinkAja are able to withdraw cash using their smartphones at the 40,000 ATMs in the Link network throughout Indonesia.
LinkAja claims to also be the only digital payment platform in the country that offers remittance services for migrant workers in Singapore. Through a collaboration with Singaporean telco Singtel, it also offers overseas payment transaction services in the island state, according to LinkAja CEO Danu Wicaksana. In the near future, Danu said that this service will be available in several neighboring countries and territories like Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Although it’s still new, LinkAja announced ambitions to be the biggest e-wallet player in Indonesia and challenge incumbents, including the two market leaders, Go-Pay and Ovo, as well as Alibaba-backed Dana. These three platforms are only a few years old but managed to scale as they are well-integrated into ride-hailing, e-commerce, and other app-based on-demand services.
LinkAja began its operations in March 2019 and claims to have 22 million registered users due to the integration of existing e-payment services provided by the state-owned banks -Bank Mandiri’s e-cash, BRI’s T-bank and My QR, BNI’s Yap! and UnikQu—as well as Telkomsel’s TCash.
LinkAja CEO Danu Wicaksana told local media that the e-wallet has an estimated transaction value of IDR 1 billion (USD 70,970) per day. The company targets to have at least 44 million registered users this year.
LinkAja is managed by Finarya, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s state-owned telco Telkomsel and other state-owned companies, which include banks Mandiri and BRI, among others; gas and energy corporation Pertamina; insurance corporation Asuransi Jiwasraya, and financial institution Danareksa.
The launch was attended by several high-ranking officials, including vice president Jusuf Kalla, IT Minister Rudiantara, and state-owned enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno, according to an official statement, and went off smoother than the launch of the platform itself, which was pushed back three times.
Encouraging financial inclusion through cashless financial services in Indonesia has found broad government support. Together with the central bank, Bank Indonesia, the government has called for a “national non-cash movement” aims to raise public awareness about the benefits and adoption of cashless instruments in order to boost the establishment of a cashless society in the country.
