Jakarta-based Payfazz said it has secured an e-money license from Bank Indonesia (BI), the country’s central bank. The license could help the fintech firm widen its reach across Indonesia’s large unbanked population.
A Payfazz agent / Photo credit: Payfazz.
“With an e-money license, we’re expecting that this advancement would move us closer to our goal of becoming a full stack financial services platform for unbanked people,” Payfazz CEO and co-founder Hendra Kwik said in a statement.
With the license, Payfazz can allow users to maintain accounts with the company and use the balance to pay offline and online merchants – features similar to those offered by other local fintech firms like GoPay and Ovo. Payfazz users can also top up their balance through agents once and make multiple transactions on their own later on.
Launched in 2017, Payfazz claims to operate the largest branchless banking agent network in Indonesia and offers banking services to around 180 million unbanked people who live in rural areas. According to the company, it has more than 700,000 registered agents across the country and serves over 80 million end users.
Payfazz’s latest move comes amid the rapid growth of the e-money space in Indonesia. According to BI, electronic money transactions value hit US$13.95 billion in 2020, up from US$10.07 billion a year earlier.
Apart from Payfazz, other companies have also secured e-money licenses in Indonesia. Ecommerce player Shopee, for example, did so through its parent company, Sea Group.
Grab and Tokopedia failed to get an e-money license in 2018 and decided to team up with Ovo for e-wallet services instead.
Editing by Collin Furtado and Arpit Nayak
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