GoTo’s GoPay avoids gimmicks in pursuit of growth
[JAKARTA] Indonesia’s leading e-commerce platform GoTo does not need any splashy gimmicks for its e-wallet GoPay’s drive for growth in the country, said the company’s president of financial technology Hans Patuwo.
GoTo recently opened up the e-wallet to the rest of Indonesia, after a pilot phase was launched in several cities in South-east Asia’s largest economy.
Instead, the plan is to achieve growth for GoPay through a more “bottom-up” approach by anticipating its mass market audiences’ needs and how these consumers would want to be reached out to, rather than the usual “big-splash marketing”, said Patuwo.
He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of UOB’s Gateway to Asean conference, held in the Indonesian capital on Wednesday (Oct 11).
Though Indonesia already has various e-payment service providers, the fintech head believes the app’s differentiating factor lies in its parent company’s large user base of 60 million.
GoTo’s strong understanding of local needs is also one of its key strengths, he said.
The app, launched in July this year, is a “lighter” version of its Gojek and Tokopedia apps. It requires less storage space and allows users to make bill payments or buy data packages, among other financial services.
GoPay also adopts Indonesia’s QR Code Indonesian Standard – the standardised QR code approved by Bank Indonesia (BI).
The central bank earlier announced that travellers visiting Indonesia from Singapore will be able to use their smartphones to make QR code payments from their Nets-linked bank account. Conversely, those from Indonesia can make payments via the QR code provided by Nets in Singapore.
GoPay’s adoption of the QR code means its Indonesia users will be able to make payment in Singapore via the app, when the cross-border QR code system is launched. BI said that it expects to roll out the initiative by the end of this year.
Since GoPay’s launch, Patuwo said that the company has been targeting mass markets via a “grassroots” approach. This involves thinking less about what the company wants to sell, knowing what consumers want and how they want to be reached.
GoTo added that it has set internal growth targets for its payments app, but declined to reveal further details.
For the second quarter of the year, the superapp’s gross revenue for its fintech services arm registered marginal growth of 2 per cent compared with the previous year. While its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation improved 45 per cent year on year in Q2, the fintech arm continued to register a loss of 508 billion rupiah (S$44.1 million).
It said in its financial report that the launch of the GoPay app will enable the company to amass a “broader and more inclusive user base beyond the Gojek and Tokopedia platforms” and serve as an “effective tool for rolling out financial services to new users”.
Though it is not known how many users out of the 60 million on GoTo’s platforms use GoPay, Patuwo believes that the Indonesian market is one that is still largely untapped. He estimates another 130 million more potential users for both GoTo and GoPay.
