Grab‘s Dominant Position in Indonesia’s E-payment？

That Tokopedia has become a key investor of OVO arouses people’s curiosity about future directions of the ecosystem of Indonesia’s e-wallet. Grab is leading a Series B round of up to US$100 million in commitments into Indonesia’s state-backed e-wallet LinkAja, the companies announced in a statement on Tuesday.

This marks LinkAja’s first external investment from a private company, as well as a new twist in the long-running e-wallet war between rivals Grab and Gojek. LinkAja’s Series B round is joined by three Indonesian heavyweights: domestic telco Telkomsel, BRI Ventures, the venture arm of state bank BRI, and Mandiri Capital Indonesia.

Neneng Goenadi, managing director of Grab Indonesia, said: "We chose to invest in LinkAja because we believe that together, we can help accelerate our shared goal of improving financial inclusion in Indonesia."

Top 4 E-wallets in Indonesia

Indonesia, with its huge population scale and relatively sound economic development, draws great attention from e-wallets. There was a time when banks, telecoms companies, retailers, and consortiums all wanted to step into e-wallet.

Among 37 local players in Indonesia’s e-payment market, Gopay, one of the services available in the Gojek superapp, is the first to get the licence, thus taking the lead in Indonesia’s e-payment because of various services offered by its parent company. In 2018, after Grab’s tie-up with Uber, Grab began to gather momentum, cooperating with OVO, which is an e-wallet operator incubated by Lippo Group, and establishing a relatively complete ecosystem with some enterprises like Tokopedia, the leading C2C e-commerce player. In 2019, its trading volume surpassed that of Gopay in the subsidy battle.

Dana, despite its overall lead in technology and experience, fails to get what it wants to do done. Emtek’s e-commerce platform Bukalapak, involving movie ticket service, is lagged far behind compared with OVO’s taxi, takeout and C2C e-commerce. Occasionally, the news that Dana will merge with OVO comes out. It is reported that both sides have long been in negotiation and almost reach consensus. However, they have not gone as far as wanting to sign contracts.

LinkAja was formed last year through a merger of e-wallets of Indonesian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) Telkomsel, Bank Mandiri, BRI and BNI, and oil-and-gas firm Pertamina. No wonder they are not as aggressive as the other e-wallets. Though LinkAja has promoted plenty of advertisements both online and offline, it is still lagged behind in the pace of marketing acumen and promotion.

In July this year, it emerged that LinkAja could run out of money by the end of the year and is looking for fresh funds as well as external investment to help itself further roll out its e-wallet app.

It is certain that state-owned LinkAja could not, and would not be a failure.

Will Grab Become the Ruling E-wallet? 

Alibaba and Softbank are the shareholders of Grab, Tokoepedia and Dana, so it is only a matter of time before their cooperation. But now everyone is busy with how to further grab market share to strengthen their voice.

And in June, Facebook, which has long wanted to launch mobile payments in Indonesia, invested in Gojek along with PayPal to lay the groundwork for WhatsApp Pay’s future launch.

That, of course, makes LinkAja a key player in changing the landscape of Indonesia’s payments industry. If Grab succeeds in taking a stake in LinkAja and the mergence of OVO and DANA goes ahead, Grab’s payment ecosystem in Indonesia would include three major players (OVO, Dana, LinkAja) but Gopay.

In addition, despite its poor performance in the market, LinkAja is backed by a number of state-owned companies, such as the People’s Bank of Indonesia, which will be a big boost for Grab's future expansion in Indonesia, where the business environment is relatively complex.