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Hello there,
Happy New Year! We hope the past few days were restful for you. I sure did enjoy unplugging for a good week and a half while our office closed for a year-end break.
But back to the grind:
“Feature or product?” was something that many people asked about buy now, pay later (BNPL) as the trend swept across the globe.
It’s a fair question. After all, assuming all things are constant, are you as a consumer more likely to try a new product or service from a platform you already use, or try a whole new application altogether?
If you’re like me and prefer using apps in silos – i.e., having one app per service – you might find yourself eventually running low on real estate on your smartphone’s homepage, or needlessly scrolling through pages of apps just to locate the one you need.
The early-wage access (EWA) sector is grappling with the same dilemma. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, where pure-play companies from GagiGesa and Wagely to established peer-to-peer lenders, staffing platforms, and software companies are flocking to the space, as my colleague Ardi writes in this week’s big story.
(We’ve covered the EWA model from a regional perspective and the billion dollar opportunity it affords in an earlier story, so do check that out if you haven’t.)
The answer to that question – at least in the BNPL space – has become clearer in recent months, as tech juggernauts such as Apple, PayPal, and Block (formerly Square) have acquired BNPL outfits to provide the service on top of their existing hardware, payment, or merchant offerings. These incumbents could have a real edge over younger BNPL firms, owing to the sheer size of their consumer and enterprise customer bases, as well as the pools of data available to them.
The same could apply in the EWA space. Will software firms that can tap existing relationships with enterprise clients beat EWA-focused startups to the punch? Read on to find out.
Meanwhile, our analysis this week features CitaDAO, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for real estate that has the potential to change the way people invest in properties.
— Melissa
THE BIG STORY
Is earned-wage access Indonesia’s latest hot ticket?
THE HOT TAKE
NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW
FYI
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