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Putra Muskita · · 3 min read

The credit scorers behind Indonesia’s fintech rise

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Welcome to an abbreviated version of The Top Up, and a happy Eid to all!

As fintech continues to take off in Indonesia, credit-scoring startups are playing an important role in the shadows.

Like in any other banking system, Indonesia’s conventional banks regularly perform credit-scoring analysis.

But their methods would exclude a fair amount of underbanked Indonesians: As of 2019, 92 million people have never participated in the financial services ecosystem of Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

In this week’s Big Story, we map out a crop of startups that primarily use alternative datasets to answer a key question. Can someone pay back their loan in a timely manner even if they’ve never even borrowed money in the first place?

While many of these startups are local, there are also foreign entrants from more developed fintech markets like China and Singapore as well as a household ecommerce name or two.

Read on for more.

— Putra


THE BIG STORY

The key players in Indonesia’s credit-scoring space

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Ecommerce companies like Tokopedia and Blibli have also dipped their toes into the industry.


NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Also check out Tech in Asia’s coverage of the fintech scene here.


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Putra Muskita

Covering ecommerce and fintech for Tech in Asia. Drop me a line: 1putra.muskita@techinasia.com or Twitter @putramuskita.