Banks smiling, startups sweating with Indonesia’s new payment systems underway

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Hello there,

I have never been big on e-wallets, though I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of putting my money in different places for consumption purposes.

I have always relied solely on my bank’s mobile app for my financial activities, however much it lets me down.

Probably the biggest pain point of using mobile banking apps in Indonesia, apart from the frequent tech glitches, is when paying at offline stores or eateries that don’t have an electronic data capture machine, which lets merchants accept payments via bank cards.

In the end, I would end up having to find the nearest ATM to withdraw some cash, or get my wife to settle the payment using one of her multiple (and slightly overutilized) e-wallet accounts.

So when QRIS started mushrooming in and around Jakarta around a year ago, I was overjoyed.

The sight of QR codes by cashiers in stores and eateries is not exactly uncommon, but those codes used to belong exclusively to certain e-wallet operators. With the QRIS system, however, sellers use a single QR code to accept payments from various e-wallets and banking apps.

This rise of QRIS in Indonesia – as well as fund transfer service BI Fast – are bound to shake up the market as far as the country’s digital payment operators are concerned. My colleague, Jofie, delves deeper into these payment systems in this week’s Big Story.

What’s interesting is how these new systems could potentially swing the momentum away from fintech players and toward conventional banks with digital banking services. What could also work to the banks’ advantage is the fact that many tech startups have curbed down their subsidies to cut down costs amid unfavorable market conditions.

Speaking of the global economic downturn, one fintech powerhouse has seen enough signs of it to make painful adjustments to their headcount. Global payment gateway major Stripe announced last week that it will lay off 14% of its workforce. In this week’s Hot Take, I dive into Stripe’s job cuts and why they may be, compared to other firms, more telling about the rocky road ahead.

– Ardi

THE BIG STORY

QRIS, BI Fast propel banks’ fight against e-wallets in Indonesia

Image credit: Timmy Loen

THE HOT TAKE

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