Selalu Ada’s e-payment app wants to take hassle out of prepaid mobile top-ups

A number of e-payment providers have been popping up in Indonesia in recent years. Adding to this list is Selalu Ada, a new e-payment app for the Indonesian market which taps into the huge market for prepaid mobile credit top-ups.

Looking at the mobile market in Indonesia, 98 percent of mobile subscribers are using prepaid plans across all telcos. Selalu Ada – which means “always available” – allows users to top up their prepaid account (regardless of which telco), doing away with the traditional process of going to stores to purchase scratch-cards. You can also use the service to top up any extra SIM cards you might have.

It took the team six months to develop the Selalu Ada app, which includes building an interface for each telco and integrating the payment system.

To use the service, consumers have to top up their Selalu Ada accounts through online bank transfer options available within the app. In turn, the credit transferred to the app can be used to top up mobile credits.

More than mobile top-ups

With more than 278 million subscribers in the country, the mobile market is a large one for startups to tackle. Selalu Ada co-founder Hiro Whardana points out that in addition to the prepaid top-ups, the service can also be used to pay electricity bills, which has been slowly changing to a prepaid model in the past two years.

Selalu Ada’s revenue comes from taking a cut – around one to two percent – from credit put into the service. Looking forward, it also plans to expand to content-based products like Indobooksand other merchants who want to join the platform. It also plans to expand in other Asian countries with similar needs, like the Philippines.

Launched in September, the app has gained 500 unique active users monthly, and around 100 transactions are being done daily through the app.

Selalu Ada is available for free on Android. It will be also be available soon on Blackberry and iOS.

(Editing by Steven Millward)

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2013, our event running on November 21 and 22. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @TechinAsia, and on our Facebook page.