Is earned-wage access Indonesia’s latest hot ticket?

In mid-2020, Datta Dirgayusa was approached by a startup that wanted to offer earned-wage access (EWA) services to his employer.

It was an encounter the HR supervisor had anticipated, having followed the rapid development of Indonesia’s EWA startups since late 2019. But after hearing the pitch, Dirgayusa – who manages over 500 employees for the Jakarta-based hospitality firm he worked for – was unconvinced and turned down the offer.

“We had not done any internal analysis or survey on whether EWA is needed or not,” he says. Questions over the startup’s legal standing and the pricing also factored into the company’s decision, he adds.

But while this was Dirgayusa’s first conversation with an EWA provider, it probably won’t be his last.

GajiGesa founders (from left) Vidit Agarwal and Martyna Malinowska with Indonesia general manager Ade Yuandah Saragih (right) / Photo credit: GajiGesa

In the past 12 months, Indonesia has seen companies flock to the EWA space from different verticals, all attempting to win over employers by giving workers instant access to their wages even before their payday.

The media spotlight has largely fallen upon companies like GajiGesa, Wagely, which are spearheaded by high-profile founders and have earned interest from notable global VC firms. However, a significant number of other startups have tiptoed their way into the space as well.

Financial advisory platform Halofina has rolled out Halogaji to tap into the EWA sector, while peer-to-peer lenders KoinWorks and Modalku have also jumped on the bandwagon with their platforms KoinGaji and Modal Kasbon, respectively. Alami, a Sharia-compliant P2P platform, is also piloting a similar product.

In the parallel segment of human resource information systems (HRIS), Jojonomic has launched a platform called Gajian on Demand, and software company Mekari says it is set to launch an EWA-like product under its employee benefits platform Mekari Flex.

Similarly, staffing startup Workmate has started offering EWA services to selected clients, while outsourcing platform MyRobin has launched a similar product for its blue-collar partners and (potentially) external users.

The bullishness in the sector is understandable. In a previous story, we estimated EWA to be a billion-dollar opportunity in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia taking the largest slice of the pie.

The country is home to the biggest underbanked and unbanked population in the region, with only 23% of its some 270 million citizens having full access to banking services.

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