SG fintech firm adds instant cross-border payments in Indonesia

Singapore-based fintech startup Moolahgo has launched its real-time payment service in Indonesia.

Photo credit: Moolahgo

The feature, available on its e-wallet app under Pay Now to Indonesia, allows users to select a mobile number stored in the phone’s contacts list to make cross-border payments to Indonesia from Singapore.

The service currently covers five major e-wallet operators in Indonesia, namely Ovo, Dana, GoPay, LinkAja, and ShopeePay, which has a combined total of over 300 million users.

“Indonesians living and working in Singapore no longer need to rely on traditional, costly, and slow [bank-to-bank] transfers to send money home and can also avoid the unsafe practices of cash pickups,” said the company.

For the Pay Now to Indonesia service, Moolahgo will charge S$0.50 (US$0.37) per transaction. As part of the launch, it is waiving off all fees until further notice.

In September, Moolahgo raised US$3.3 million in a pre-series A funding round from Indonesian services giant Lippo Group. The conglomerate had established digital payments firm Ovo in 2016 and helped turn it into one of the country’s unicorns.

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The initiative is in line with global efforts to link up national payment systems. For example, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand launched the linkage of Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay in April for faster and safer cross-border payments between the two countries using just a mobile number.

Currency converted from Singapore dollars to US dollars: US$1 = S$1.34.