It’s fair to say that Bitcoin technology has grabbed attention in Indonesia, especially after local startup Bitdoku facilitated US$22,000 worth of bitcoin transactions within 24 hours at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014. Tech in Asia also recently ran a piece on the most popular Bitcoin startups in Indonesia.
However, as competition heats up, local crypto-currency players must now also go up against global Bitcoin wallet, exchange, and merchant service BitX, a Singapore-based firm that opened its doors in Jakarta earlier this week.
“We believe that the biggest opportunity for crypto-currencies are in emerging markets,” says BitX CEO Marcus Swanepoel. “These are markets where financial systems are often inefficient […] We believe that crypto-currency technology can have a huge social impact on these markets by making it easier and cheaper to move money.”
See: BitX is the prettiest, most user-friendly Bitcoin wallet yet
80 percent of Indonesia’s population is unbanked and the archipelago is notorious for its difficulties in the epayments realm. “The issue about banking the unbanked specifically is something that we think crypto technology can help solve in the long run, but currently it is not a viable way to bank the unbanked,” says Swanepoel.
BitX claims to have the edge over its competitors in terms of mobile strategy and execution. BitX is supposedly the only one that allows “know-your-customer” due diligence activity on behalf of local financial institutions. Swanepoel also says he looks forward to hopefully working with Indonesia’s local ecommerce firms, and that BitX will soon make cross-border remittance faster and cheaper for its users separated by distance in Southeast Asia.
In August, BitX closed a US$800,000 seed round of funding from London-based Ariadne Capital, Barry Silbert’s New York-based Bitcoin Opportunity Corp, and Palo Alto-based financial innovation investor, Carol Realini.
See: Bitcoin not to be regulated in Indonesia, but still illegal
(Update 2/5/14: This article has been updated to show that BitX is hopeful to work with Indonesia’s ecommerce firms in general. Marcus Swanepoel also wants to clarify that Indonesia has some great local Bitcoin startups, and he hopes to work with them as well.)
Editing by Josh Horwitz
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