July 22, 2025 • 25 mins
On the latest episode of The MoneyPot Live at Money20/20 Asia, host Rachel Morrissey sits down with Hans Patuwo, Chief Operating Officer of GoTo Group, the largest digital ecosystem in Indonesia. Discover how GoTo's integrated ecosystem approach drives growth in one of the world's most dynamic digital economies.
Hans reveals the fascinating journey of GoTo Financial, and how the company leverages proprietary ecosystem data to provide financial services to Indonesia's 97 million unbanked citizens. Learn about GoTo's innovative approach to customer acquisition, monetization, and retention in a diverse market spanning 17,000 islands with unique subcultures.
Key topics include:
- The evolution of GoTo Group from mobility services to a broader ecosystem that includes fintech solutions
- How COVID-19 accelerated digital payments and reshaped business priorities
- Strategies for serving unbanked populations with limited credit access
- Data-driven approaches to sustainable lending in emerging markets
- The challenges of designing financial products for diverse user segments
Whether you're interested in fintech innovation, emerging markets, or platform economics, this episode offers valuable insights into how data and local expertise are transforming financial inclusion in Southeast Asia.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Money Pop.
My name is Rachel Morrissey, Iam your host today, I am the
head of content for the US showand I am the executive producer
of the Money Pop podcast.
I am here today live at ourAsia show and we get to talk to
Hans Patuo, who is the ChiefOperating Officer of GoToGroup,
(00:29):
and we're going to get to awhole bunch of different things
about what GoToGroup does andtalk about what the difference
they're making in what'shappening with platforms.
So let's start with what isGoToGroup?
Talk to me about who they are.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Sure.
So GoToGroup is an Indonesiantech company.
We launched our first app in2015.
And thankfully, we have beensuccessful enough and we did a
public listing in IndonesiaStock Exchange in 2022.
We have two major businessesthat we run.
One is what we call theon-demand service, so think of
(01:06):
it like ride hailing and fooddelivery.
We have a second business unit,which is our FinTech unit, and
there we have payments as wellas lending.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So let me ask right off the bat which came first,
chicken or the egg?
So was the FinTech unit bornout of needs from the other unit
?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Because as soon as you said it, I was like, oh,
they were having issues and theywere like we need something
that solves problems here waybetter than what's available on
the market, and so you are spoton.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Let's do this.
You are spot on, Rachel.
You're spot on.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So talk to me a little bit about that.
What were some of the issuesthat you're seeing and what
inspired the birth of theFinTech unit?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sure, so it came in multiple evolutions.
The first step is in 2015, whenwe launched the Ride Hailing
and Food Delivery app.
It really did well and wasquite successful.
However, we ran into a majorfriction point, which is the
payment of using cash.
Both the service provider, thepartners, as well as the
(02:23):
customer needed to have specificamounts of cash, and change was
a bit of an issue.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So back in 2016.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And riding around with cash.
Delivering with cash makes youa target.
There you go.
So yeah, there you go.
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And so it started very benign in 2016.
We say we needed to have apayment solution.
It was closed loop, like onlywithin the Gojek back then
ecosystem, and, to be honestwith you, it pretty much
remained that way.
Along the way we picked up afew, we did some acquihires of a
few fintech businesses, like wegot a small merchant payment
(03:02):
gateway, we got a point of salesystem, but really the next
major catalyst was the COVIDpandemic as it was for so many.
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And I don't mean to, I do not mean that flippantly at
all.
The pandemic, particularly inthe payments area, was such an
accelerant for contactlesspayments in so many ways around
the globe that it's hard to seehow it could be matched.
You could see all of thesethings were lining up for it,
but you just didn't see anythingabout the adoption of it.
(03:33):
And then it's funny because Iremember COVID.
I remember sitting in myapartment and watching a TV
commercial where they wereadvertising a contactless
payment and my jaw dropped openbecause it was a Burger King and
I was sitting there going,burger King is advertising we do
contactless payments and Ithought, okay, my brain, my
(03:54):
world has flipped.
I was like wait, okay, what I dois we're getting way too
popular.
This is weird.
Anyway, I did not mean tointerrupt you with that.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
No, no, all good, all good.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's all part of that cycle, so I totally get it.
So COVID comes and you guys gooh.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yes, and you can imagine right when COVID hit,
our transportation business wentsouth in a hurry, but other
parts of the business, like thisMason payment unit, really
really took off.
And I think what COVID also didfor us was it gave us a bit of
time to breathe, because we'vealways been on the treadmill
2015, 16, 17, 18, always in thetreadmill growing, raising funds
(04:34):
, growing, raising funds.
With the lower amount ofeconomic activity around the
COVID period, we started tothink and we said wait a minute,
wait a minute.
Around the COVID period, westarted to think and we said
wait a minute, wait a minute.
Payments fintech is a completelydifferent universe to
delivering passengers and foodRegulations are different,
(04:55):
customer expectations aredifferent and this is completely
bizarre that we're managingthem all as one.
So in 2021, we put together allthe different pieces that are
FinTech related within the groupand we created what is now
called Goto Financial.
So I would say that's the firsttime in 2021, only a few short
(05:16):
years ago that we started tothink of FinTech financial
inclusion, growth in providingcredit services as a standalone
business proposition rather thanjust an enabler, to your point,
to increase the conversionrates on our ride-hailing and
food delivery businesses.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Sense.
When you say it, I meanobviously for your
transportation business peopleweren't going anywhere but for
your delivery businesses.
Was COVID also a halt or abreather, or was it an
accelerant there as well?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, so it was an accelerant.
Yeah, not quite to the samelevel as payments.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, that makes total sense.
So let's talk to us a littlebit.
Like, gopay became the big unithere, and so what is the
difference now?
Like, where is GoPay headed?
Where are they sitting in thebigger scheme of things?
Because obviously they're notthere.
(06:19):
If they're a whole unit,they're not just an internal use
.
So who's partnering with you onGoPay?
What's your customer base?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Sure.
So okay, when we started tothink about the FinTech as an
individual unit, individualbusiness, we started to think
about who are our customers.
And Indonesia is the world'sfourth most populous country 270
million.
So we've got a lot of people.
However, the GDP per capita isstill fairly emerging $5,000 GDP
(06:55):
per capita and we started torealize that a lot of our ride
hailing and our food deliverybusinesses are probably more
useful to the, let's say, middleclass and above Middle class
and above right, because themass market would not buy food
from the outside.
They'll go to the market, cookthemselves or they'll just go to
the food stall right outsidetheir house to pick something up
(07:17):
.
So we realized that there wereand here's another interesting
piece of statistics In Indonesia, in a country of 270 million,
the central bank has said thatabout 97 million of the
Indonesians are unbanked 97million.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
How many in Indonesia ?
270.
That's like a fourth right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, it's a significant proportion.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
No, that is a significant proportion.
I know I was like wait a minute, I'm doing really bad math here
, but that sounds like over aquarter of the population.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Exactly Okay and check this out.
Do you know how many people inIndonesia have credit cards?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I would think very few.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Indeed.
So there are somewhere around10 plus million, 11, 12 million
unique credit card holders.
So quickly we begin.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Like half a percent of the population or something
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Wow.
Yes, I mean that's so.
It's so antithetical to thewhere I you know where most of
the people I talk to are from.
Yeah, I talked to are fromright In the West the.
West, in the United States andeven in Europe, the idea of
(08:30):
having low card usage is almostunheard of, right?
But I know that that is not thecase in most of the global
South, and when you hear half apercent, you're like, wow,
that's a really low amount ofunique card users in a single
country.
Okay, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Talk to me more.
So the conclusion was there wasa huge market here, but it may
not be the same user segmentthat are using our
transportation and food deliverybusinesses and they needed
something different.
And there's a reason why theyare still unbanked and not have
access to credit.
There are challenges arounddata availability, challenges
(09:10):
around onboarding, friction, kycand so on and so forth.
So what we did since then is werealized quickly that our
existing application fortransportation for food is not
going to cut it.
It's a bit too large, it's alot of features and, to be
honest, not everybody hashigh-end iPhones right, there's
(09:33):
a lot of Android phones outthere and we needed a GoPay app
in 2023, in mid-year 2023.
And it's grown very rapidly.
We also launched a lending unit, also in 2023.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Oh, connected to it.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yes, connected to it.
So now we do consumer lending,small ticket sizes, both BNPL
and some cash loans.
We do that both within theecosystem ie to our
transportation customers, to ourfood delivery customers, but
with our app we're also now openloop.
So we take, so people register,there's a lot of interest, a
(10:23):
lot of demand, and the questionhas been okay, there's a lot of
interest, a lot of demand andthe question has been okay.
There's always been a lot ofdemand, given the very, very
small credit penetration in thecountry.
But how are we able to do this?
How are we able to serve themin a way that's financially
sustainable, where the rates arenot too high and the risk and
the losses are also undercontrol?
(10:44):
And that's really where wespend a lot of time thinking
about that and hence this notionof we have to be.
We have proprietary data thatwe have to leverage.
Now I think this is notsomething new.
Everybody talks about data,data, data.
Our experience with it is thatthere are three distinct pieces
(11:07):
of that journey.
The first one is getting thedata, and you think about it.
For a lending business, thedata that you need to be able to
take underwriting decisions iscritical and there are
oftentimes public or third-partysources of such data credit
bureaus, etc.
I think a lot of those servicesin Indonesia are still fairly
(11:29):
nascent and are still developingin capability and
sophistication, so availabilityof ready-to-use data can be a
challenge.
So this is where we start tothink about all the different
contact points that we have.
If somebody takes atransportation service, with
their consent, we know wherethey're traveling to what form
(11:52):
of travel they're taking Is it atwo-wheel scooter or is it a
four-wheel?
Because we have varioustransportation services.
Similarly, with food delivery,we know how frequently they buy,
we know how much whichsometimes it's not much and on
the GoPay app itself, thingslike bill payments If you pay
your electricity bill, we get asense of how big your house is,
(12:14):
and so on and so forth.
So getting the data has been achallenge.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Is the GoPay app also an account holding app?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
It is.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So you can actually hold money there or get paid P2P
on it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And so then, so you would have data not only on,
like, what they order, how muchthey pay, what they pay on.
You'd have some, you'd havequite a bit of data on their own
cash flow.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And their own rate of payment like whether they're
getting regular payments, and sonot only would you be able to
kind of have the underwritingdata for how much money they
actually have in their account,but just what, the probability
of what is coming in and therate that it's coming in.
(13:04):
That's right.
So that's actually a lot ofdata on a single person, and I
know there have been companiesthat are similar in other
countries that have been able tolend to businesses based on
their cash flow, and so this issort of interesting because
you're lending to people basedon their cashflow, and so this
is sort of interesting becauseyou're lending to people based
(13:25):
on their cashflow as much asyou're lending to them on their
traditional credit risk profile.
It's on their cashflow, likewill they be able to pay us back
?
Probably.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And will they want?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
to?
Probably, because it's allinside this system.
So when you say 97 million areunbanked, and that's well into
over a quarter of the population, and what has been the growth
rate of GoPay, how many have youseen adopted and how many are
you assuming are adopting it askind of like a main for lack of
(14:01):
a better term bank account?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, yes, so we launched the app in 2023.
And I'm very happy that we alsowon a Google Award that year,
play Store Award, and we haveabout Thank you, thank you.
There's a story behind that,but we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And we now have about 20 million users in GoPay.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That is a lot.
How much do you think isoverlapped with the banked and
the unbanked?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I think right now our quick sense is that probably
around 50-50.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Because we have two different profiles.
We have the profile of ourexisting customers who are
already using transportation andfood delivery services, so they
tend to be banked.
But, however, the GoPay app isopening up new user segments and
so now it's probably about50-50.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
As time passes, we expect the proportion of the
unbanked to only increase, asyou can imagine that's pretty
fascinating because, um, we'vehad something similar in the
states with like cash app whereum, for better or for worse, it
sort of became the bank ofchoice for many people who were
unbanked or who were, I hate tosay, underbanked, because I
(15:20):
don't really love that term butdidn't find all the services
they wanted in a traditionalbank.
And they literally use it almostsolely and it reached out to a
lot of people who were nottraditionally financially
included, and so this feels likeit has kind of a similar
(15:40):
trajectory.
So this feels like it has kindof a similar trajectory and they
had explosive growth too andkind of became the dominant one
very quickly.
So it's kind of interesting.
So let me ask this how are youbuilding the model for
(16:01):
sustainable growth?
What is your next step?
To get customer acquisition?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, so perhaps three parts, if you don't mind,
rachel.
The first part is how do weacquire effectively and
efficiently?
And then second then how do wemonetize?
And then third, how do weretain right?
So, on acquisition, thephilosophy that we have is that
(16:26):
we need to build products thatcustomers need, and that sounds
like yeah duh, everybody saysthat.
What we found is that.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I love it.
It's a no duh and it's.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think it's a lot easier said than done.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
It is.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And one, maybe one story, which is on the GoPay app
, right.
So we were sitting in Jakarta,in the capital of Indonesia
metropolis, and we're sittingthere, we're designing this new
GoPay app, right, and we had anidea what it would look like.
It'll be black, it'll be cool,it'll have gold accents, and we
(17:05):
were really convinced that thisis what customers wanted.
We then went on to test theproduct Classic case, right, and
we did not stay in Jakarta, thecapital, so we went to some
second-tier and third-tiercities and the comments and the
feedback was very damning.
(17:25):
It's like no, we don'tunderstand what this is, why do
I need this for?
And so we had to go back andreally, really redesign to make
it super streamlined, superno-frills.
One feedback that we got isthat, hey look, I don't have a
lot of RAM on my phone, right?
(17:46):
So if you have too muchgraphics or anything that's
animated, it takes up too muchRAM and I'll have to delete
other apps.
So I think that is the one area.
And Indonesia how do I say this?
Right, it is an archipelagocountry.
It's 17,000 islands, whichmeans that, you know, ideas can
(18:07):
be very different, cultures,subcultures can be very
different from island to island.
So, in a complex environment,we like to believe that being a
local player has its advantages,because we understand how the
psyche and it's not like you cando simple research, do a focus
group and get a sense of how itoperates, because there are
probably, you know, hundreds andhundreds of different,
(18:29):
different types of subcultures,so it's really coming from that.
Um, you know, we use that tobuild our products.
Um, we have one account, a bank.
We work together with a bank,um, with a digital bank in
indonesia called bank jago, to abank account.
We work together with a bank,with a digital bank in Indonesia
called Bank Jago, to create abank account.
We don't have a bank license,so we work with them, and it's
(18:52):
not the first time that ane-wallet has worked together
with a bank and many banks candownload their own apps and open
a bank account.
But we work very, very hardwith this digital bank and with
Regulator to streamline the KYCprocess, which took a lot of
effort.
So I guess what I'm trying tosay is how we acquire users.
We can't use money that wentpasse about five, six years ago,
(19:16):
that it has got to be based onuser insights.
Secondly, how we monetize,because you can have a lot of
users and still not make money,which again is very uncool these
days.
And monetization is coming fromvalue-added services such as
credit, by providing creditservices.
And when we say credit, itreally, at the end of the day,
(19:37):
is a data business.
How much data can you acquire?
How relevant is the data?
Can we convert that data intounderwriting decisions that are
better than others?
And there the art form is notjust the refining of the data,
(19:57):
but it's also getting the dataand finding more and more
sources where we can get suchdata.
Now, lastly, on retention, ithas got to be on ways that
provide user delight.
So simple things, right, likewe experimented with many things
, like we did streaks, forexample.
Right, and that has worked tosome extent.
What's a streak?
So, if you keep doing one thingfor three times, three
(20:21):
consecutive?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
days and then you go to something you order the same
drink three days, exactly, okay.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think what we find is, perhaps in countries like
Indonesia, I think people enjoyhow do I say this?
Things that have entertainmentvalue.
So people come back and playsimple games, and again, we're
thinking really here of the massmarket, where maybe a lot of
(20:48):
them have a little bit more timeon their hands and, however, a
lot less assets, a lot lesspurchasing power.
So how can we retain them tokeep coming back to the app to
do things that may not befintech-related, just to keep
them engaged on the platform.
And when they do that, whenthey play these mini-games,
(21:11):
which we are still in theprocess of rolling out, it's
also additional information oftheir preferences that can go
back, and then again it becomesa self-reinforcing virtual cycle
.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Right, I mean, a virtual cycle is always
interesting.
What I'm wondering about hereyou're offering this small
credit offering and you'reoffering to consumers it's like
a BNPL these types of creditofferings Are you looking at
offering to merchants?
Are you looking at the oppositeside of this?
(21:46):
Do you guys also operate?
Is GoPay also a merchant POS?
Okay, so talk to me about thatbecause that's a different data
set.
Sure but it would be just asapplicable and maybe more Sure,
maybe even more so.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So, once we have once we launched a gopay consumer
app in 2023 um we actuallylaunched a gopay merchant app in
2024 okay, so you did follow itup with the app just just a
year ago.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Well, how could you not?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, and I think what we spend a lot of time
agonizing over in the Merchantapp is look which segment of the
merchants right, Because theenterprises obviously are out of
scope, and don't need it.
And don't need it.
You've got the small and mediumbusinesses.
(22:40):
Small business and mediumbusiness can be very, very
different in sophistication.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Well, and that can mean anything from like five to
like 800 people.
Correct, there's a really widebreadth there, exactly you might
need to refine what the smalland medium businesses are.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And then there's also the informal merchants, right,
the micro merchants, and inIndonesia there are tens of
millions of them.
So when we launched the GoPayMerchant App, we took some of
the learnings from the consumerapp and we really targeted the
merchant app more towards themicro and smaller side, and
(23:22):
there what we find is a lot ofthe behavior is similar to
consumers, but they needslightly different things, like
working capital, short-termloans and things like that.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
But it is a similar thing.
It's like the same kind of datathat a consumer that you could
underwrite a BNPL loan to aconsumer is very similar to the
ways that you would think aboutlending to a micro merchant, so
that's actually reallyfascinating.
Well, I okay, I'm gonna.
(23:54):
One last question what did youwin the Google Award for?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
No, we won the Google Award for the best FinTech
consumer app in Indonesia in2023.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And it sounds super well-deserved.
I think it's great and I'mreally glad to hear that you
like looking at both theconsumers and the micro
merchants.
I think that's going to beamazing in the long term.
I wish you all of the best.
Thank you, Rachel Thank you somuch for coming in today.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Just so I can end this on a semi-reasonable note.
Thank you to all of ourlisteners out there.
We love having you guys listento us here at the Money Pot,
Money 2020.
If you have an idea for apodcast that you would like to
do with us, please write us atpodcast at money2020.com.
Thank you, guys so much.
(24:50):
Have a great day.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Thank you.
Welcome to the Money Pop.
My name is Rachel Morrissey, Iam your host today, I am the
head of content for the US showand I am the executive producer
of the Money Pop podcast.
I am here today live at ourAsia show and we get to talk to
Hans Patuo, who is the ChiefOperating Officer of GoToGroup,
(00:29):
and we're going to get to awhole bunch of different things
about what GoToGroup does andtalk about what the difference
they're making in what'shappening with platforms.
So let's start with what isGoToGroup?
Talk to me about who they are.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Sure.
So GoToGroup is an Indonesiantech company.
We launched our first app in2015.
And thankfully, we have beensuccessful enough and we did a
public listing in IndonesiaStock Exchange in 2022.
We have two major businessesthat we run.
One is what we call theon-demand service, so think of
(01:06):
it like ride hailing and fooddelivery.
We have a second business unit,which is our FinTech unit, and
there we have payments as wellas lending.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So let me ask right off the bat which came first,
chicken or the egg?
So was the FinTech unit bornout of needs from the other unit
?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Because as soon as you said it, I was like, oh,
they were having issues and theywere like we need something
that solves problems here waybetter than what's available on
the market, and so you are spoton.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Let's do this.
You are spot on, Rachel.
You're spot on.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So talk to me a little bit about that.
What were some of the issuesthat you're seeing and what
inspired the birth of theFinTech unit?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sure, so it came in multiple evolutions.
The first step is in 2015, whenwe launched the Ride Hailing
and Food Delivery app.
It really did well and wasquite successful.
However, we ran into a majorfriction point, which is the
payment of using cash.
Both the service provider, thepartners, as well as the
(02:23):
customer needed to have specificamounts of cash, and change was
a bit of an issue.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So back in 2016.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And riding around with cash.
Delivering with cash makes youa target.
There you go.
So yeah, there you go.
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And so it started very benign in 2016.
We say we needed to have apayment solution.
It was closed loop, like onlywithin the Gojek back then
ecosystem, and, to be honestwith you, it pretty much
remained that way.
Along the way we picked up afew, we did some acquihires of a
few fintech businesses, like wegot a small merchant payment
(03:02):
gateway, we got a point of salesystem, but really the next
major catalyst was the COVIDpandemic as it was for so many.
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And I don't mean to, I do not mean that flippantly at
all.
The pandemic, particularly inthe payments area, was such an
accelerant for contactlesspayments in so many ways around
the globe that it's hard to seehow it could be matched.
You could see all of thesethings were lining up for it,
but you just didn't see anythingabout the adoption of it.
(03:33):
And then it's funny because Iremember COVID.
I remember sitting in myapartment and watching a TV
commercial where they wereadvertising a contactless
payment and my jaw dropped openbecause it was a Burger King and
I was sitting there going,burger King is advertising we do
contactless payments and Ithought, okay, my brain, my
(03:54):
world has flipped.
I was like wait, okay, what I dois we're getting way too
popular.
This is weird.
Anyway, I did not mean tointerrupt you with that.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
No, no, all good, all good.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's all part of that cycle, so I totally get it.
So COVID comes and you guys gooh.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yes, and you can imagine right when COVID hit,
our transportation business wentsouth in a hurry, but other
parts of the business, like thisMason payment unit, really
really took off.
And I think what COVID also didfor us was it gave us a bit of
time to breathe, because we'vealways been on the treadmill
2015, 16, 17, 18, always in thetreadmill growing, raising funds
(04:34):
, growing, raising funds.
With the lower amount ofeconomic activity around the
COVID period, we started tothink and we said wait a minute,
wait a minute.
Around the COVID period, westarted to think and we said
wait a minute, wait a minute.
Payments fintech is a completelydifferent universe to
delivering passengers and foodRegulations are different,
(04:55):
customer expectations aredifferent and this is completely
bizarre that we're managingthem all as one.
So in 2021, we put together allthe different pieces that are
FinTech related within the groupand we created what is now
called Goto Financial.
So I would say that's the firsttime in 2021, only a few short
(05:16):
years ago that we started tothink of FinTech financial
inclusion, growth in providingcredit services as a standalone
business proposition rather thanjust an enabler, to your point,
to increase the conversionrates on our ride-hailing and
food delivery businesses.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Sense.
When you say it, I meanobviously for your
transportation business peopleweren't going anywhere but for
your delivery businesses.
Was COVID also a halt or abreather, or was it an
accelerant there as well?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, so it was an accelerant.
Yeah, not quite to the samelevel as payments.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, that makes total sense.
So let's talk to us a littlebit.
Like, gopay became the big unithere, and so what is the
difference now?
Like, where is GoPay headed?
Where are they sitting in thebigger scheme of things?
Because obviously they're notthere.
(06:19):
If they're a whole unit,they're not just an internal use
.
So who's partnering with you onGoPay?
What's your customer base?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Sure.
So okay, when we started tothink about the FinTech as an
individual unit, individualbusiness, we started to think
about who are our customers.
And Indonesia is the world'sfourth most populous country 270
million.
So we've got a lot of people.
However, the GDP per capita isstill fairly emerging $5,000 GDP
(06:55):
per capita and we started torealize that a lot of our ride
hailing and our food deliverybusinesses are probably more
useful to the, let's say, middleclass and above Middle class
and above right, because themass market would not buy food
from the outside.
They'll go to the market, cookthemselves or they'll just go to
the food stall right outsidetheir house to pick something up
(07:17):
.
So we realized that there wereand here's another interesting
piece of statistics In Indonesia, in a country of 270 million,
the central bank has said thatabout 97 million of the
Indonesians are unbanked 97million.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
How many in Indonesia ?
270.
That's like a fourth right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, it's a significant proportion.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
No, that is a significant proportion.
I know I was like wait a minute, I'm doing really bad math here
, but that sounds like over aquarter of the population.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Exactly Okay and check this out.
Do you know how many people inIndonesia have credit cards?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I would think very few.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Indeed.
So there are somewhere around10 plus million, 11, 12 million
unique credit card holders.
So quickly we begin.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Like half a percent of the population or something
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Wow.
Yes, I mean that's so.
It's so antithetical to thewhere I you know where most of
the people I talk to are from.
Yeah, I talked to are fromright In the West the.
West, in the United States andeven in Europe, the idea of
(08:30):
having low card usage is almostunheard of, right?
But I know that that is not thecase in most of the global
South, and when you hear half apercent, you're like, wow,
that's a really low amount ofunique card users in a single
country.
Okay, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Talk to me more.
So the conclusion was there wasa huge market here, but it may
not be the same user segmentthat are using our
transportation and food deliverybusinesses and they needed
something different.
And there's a reason why theyare still unbanked and not have
access to credit.
There are challenges arounddata availability, challenges
(09:10):
around onboarding, friction, kycand so on and so forth.
So what we did since then is werealized quickly that our
existing application fortransportation for food is not
going to cut it.
It's a bit too large, it's alot of features and, to be
honest, not everybody hashigh-end iPhones right, there's
(09:33):
a lot of Android phones outthere and we needed a GoPay app
in 2023, in mid-year 2023.
And it's grown very rapidly.
We also launched a lending unit, also in 2023.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Oh, connected to it.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yes, connected to it.
So now we do consumer lending,small ticket sizes, both BNPL
and some cash loans.
We do that both within theecosystem ie to our
transportation customers, to ourfood delivery customers, but
with our app we're also now openloop.
So we take, so people register,there's a lot of interest, a
(10:23):
lot of demand, and the questionhas been okay, there's a lot of
interest, a lot of demand andthe question has been okay.
There's always been a lot ofdemand, given the very, very
small credit penetration in thecountry.
But how are we able to do this?
How are we able to serve themin a way that's financially
sustainable, where the rates arenot too high and the risk and
the losses are also undercontrol?
(10:44):
And that's really where wespend a lot of time thinking
about that and hence this notionof we have to be.
We have proprietary data thatwe have to leverage.
Now I think this is notsomething new.
Everybody talks about data,data, data.
Our experience with it is thatthere are three distinct pieces
(11:07):
of that journey.
The first one is getting thedata, and you think about it.
For a lending business, thedata that you need to be able to
take underwriting decisions iscritical and there are
oftentimes public or third-partysources of such data credit
bureaus, etc.
I think a lot of those servicesin Indonesia are still fairly
(11:29):
nascent and are still developingin capability and
sophistication, so availabilityof ready-to-use data can be a
challenge.
So this is where we start tothink about all the different
contact points that we have.
If somebody takes atransportation service, with
their consent, we know wherethey're traveling to what form
(11:52):
of travel they're taking Is it atwo-wheel scooter or is it a
four-wheel?
Because we have varioustransportation services.
Similarly, with food delivery,we know how frequently they buy,
we know how much whichsometimes it's not much and on
the GoPay app itself, thingslike bill payments If you pay
your electricity bill, we get asense of how big your house is,
(12:14):
and so on and so forth.
So getting the data has been achallenge.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Is the GoPay app also an account holding app?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
It is.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So you can actually hold money there or get paid P2P
on it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And so then, so you would have data not only on,
like, what they order, how muchthey pay, what they pay on.
You'd have some, you'd havequite a bit of data on their own
cash flow.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And their own rate of payment like whether they're
getting regular payments, and sonot only would you be able to
kind of have the underwritingdata for how much money they
actually have in their account,but just what, the probability
of what is coming in and therate that it's coming in.
(13:04):
That's right.
So that's actually a lot ofdata on a single person, and I
know there have been companiesthat are similar in other
countries that have been able tolend to businesses based on
their cash flow, and so this issort of interesting because
you're lending to people basedon their cashflow, and so this
is sort of interesting becauseyou're lending to people based
(13:25):
on their cashflow as much asyou're lending to them on their
traditional credit risk profile.
It's on their cashflow, likewill they be able to pay us back
?
Probably.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And will they want?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
to?
Probably, because it's allinside this system.
So when you say 97 million areunbanked, and that's well into
over a quarter of the population, and what has been the growth
rate of GoPay, how many have youseen adopted and how many are
you assuming are adopting it askind of like a main for lack of
(14:01):
a better term bank account?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, yes, so we launched the app in 2023.
And I'm very happy that we alsowon a Google Award that year,
play Store Award, and we haveabout Thank you, thank you.
There's a story behind that,but we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And we now have about 20 million users in GoPay.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That is a lot.
How much do you think isoverlapped with the banked and
the unbanked?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I think right now our quick sense is that probably
around 50-50.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Because we have two different profiles.
We have the profile of ourexisting customers who are
already using transportation andfood delivery services, so they
tend to be banked.
But, however, the GoPay app isopening up new user segments and
so now it's probably about50-50.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
As time passes, we expect the proportion of the
unbanked to only increase, asyou can imagine that's pretty
fascinating because, um, we'vehad something similar in the
states with like cash app whereum, for better or for worse, it
sort of became the bank ofchoice for many people who were
unbanked or who were, I hate tosay, underbanked, because I
(15:20):
don't really love that term butdidn't find all the services
they wanted in a traditionalbank.
And they literally use it almostsolely and it reached out to a
lot of people who were nottraditionally financially
included, and so this feels likeit has kind of a similar
(15:40):
trajectory.
So this feels like it has kindof a similar trajectory and they
had explosive growth too andkind of became the dominant one
very quickly.
So it's kind of interesting.
So let me ask this how are youbuilding the model for
(16:01):
sustainable growth?
What is your next step?
To get customer acquisition?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, so perhaps three parts, if you don't mind,
rachel.
The first part is how do weacquire effectively and
efficiently?
And then second then how do wemonetize?
And then third, how do weretain right?
So, on acquisition, thephilosophy that we have is that
(16:26):
we need to build products thatcustomers need, and that sounds
like yeah duh, everybody saysthat.
What we found is that.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I love it.
It's a no duh and it's.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think it's a lot easier said than done.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
It is.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And one, maybe one story, which is on the GoPay app
, right.
So we were sitting in Jakarta,in the capital of Indonesia
metropolis, and we're sittingthere, we're designing this new
GoPay app, right, and we had anidea what it would look like.
It'll be black, it'll be cool,it'll have gold accents, and we
(17:05):
were really convinced that thisis what customers wanted.
We then went on to test theproduct Classic case, right, and
we did not stay in Jakarta, thecapital, so we went to some
second-tier and third-tiercities and the comments and the
feedback was very damning.
(17:25):
It's like no, we don'tunderstand what this is, why do
I need this for?
And so we had to go back andreally, really redesign to make
it super streamlined, superno-frills.
One feedback that we got isthat, hey look, I don't have a
lot of RAM on my phone, right?
(17:46):
So if you have too muchgraphics or anything that's
animated, it takes up too muchRAM and I'll have to delete
other apps.
So I think that is the one area.
And Indonesia how do I say this?
Right, it is an archipelagocountry.
It's 17,000 islands, whichmeans that, you know, ideas can
(18:07):
be very different, cultures,subcultures can be very
different from island to island.
So, in a complex environment,we like to believe that being a
local player has its advantages,because we understand how the
psyche and it's not like you cando simple research, do a focus
group and get a sense of how itoperates, because there are
probably, you know, hundreds andhundreds of different,
(18:29):
different types of subcultures,so it's really coming from that.
Um, you know, we use that tobuild our products.
Um, we have one account, a bank.
We work together with a bank,um, with a digital bank in
indonesia called bank jago, to abank account.
We work together with a bank,with a digital bank in Indonesia
called Bank Jago, to create abank account.
We don't have a bank license,so we work with them, and it's
(18:52):
not the first time that ane-wallet has worked together
with a bank and many banks candownload their own apps and open
a bank account.
But we work very, very hardwith this digital bank and with
Regulator to streamline the KYCprocess, which took a lot of
effort.
So I guess what I'm trying tosay is how we acquire users.
We can't use money that wentpasse about five, six years ago,
(19:16):
that it has got to be based onuser insights.
Secondly, how we monetize,because you can have a lot of
users and still not make money,which again is very uncool these
days.
And monetization is coming fromvalue-added services such as
credit, by providing creditservices.
And when we say credit, itreally, at the end of the day,
(19:37):
is a data business.
How much data can you acquire?
How relevant is the data?
Can we convert that data intounderwriting decisions that are
better than others?
And there the art form is notjust the refining of the data,
(19:57):
but it's also getting the dataand finding more and more
sources where we can get suchdata.
Now, lastly, on retention, ithas got to be on ways that
provide user delight.
So simple things, right, likewe experimented with many things
, like we did streaks, forexample.
Right, and that has worked tosome extent.
What's a streak?
So, if you keep doing one thingfor three times, three
(20:21):
consecutive?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
days and then you go to something you order the same
drink three days, exactly, okay.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think what we find is, perhaps in countries like
Indonesia, I think people enjoyhow do I say this?
Things that have entertainmentvalue.
So people come back and playsimple games, and again, we're
thinking really here of the massmarket, where maybe a lot of
(20:48):
them have a little bit more timeon their hands and, however, a
lot less assets, a lot lesspurchasing power.
So how can we retain them tokeep coming back to the app to
do things that may not befintech-related, just to keep
them engaged on the platform.
And when they do that, whenthey play these mini-games,
(21:11):
which we are still in theprocess of rolling out, it's
also additional information oftheir preferences that can go
back, and then again it becomesa self-reinforcing virtual cycle
.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Right, I mean, a virtual cycle is always
interesting.
What I'm wondering about hereyou're offering this small
credit offering and you'reoffering to consumers it's like
a BNPL these types of creditofferings Are you looking at
offering to merchants?
Are you looking at the oppositeside of this?
(21:46):
Do you guys also operate?
Is GoPay also a merchant POS?
Okay, so talk to me about thatbecause that's a different data
set.
Sure but it would be just asapplicable and maybe more Sure,
maybe even more so.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So, once we have once we launched a gopay consumer
app in 2023 um we actuallylaunched a gopay merchant app in
2024 okay, so you did follow itup with the app just just a
year ago.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Well, how could you not?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, and I think what we spend a lot of time
agonizing over in the Merchantapp is look which segment of the
merchants right, Because theenterprises obviously are out of
scope, and don't need it.
And don't need it.
You've got the small and mediumbusinesses.
(22:40):
Small business and mediumbusiness can be very, very
different in sophistication.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Well, and that can mean anything from like five to
like 800 people.
Correct, there's a really widebreadth there, exactly you might
need to refine what the smalland medium businesses are.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And then there's also the informal merchants, right,
the micro merchants, and inIndonesia there are tens of
millions of them.
So when we launched the GoPayMerchant App, we took some of
the learnings from the consumerapp and we really targeted the
merchant app more towards themicro and smaller side, and
(23:22):
there what we find is a lot ofthe behavior is similar to
consumers, but they needslightly different things, like
working capital, short-termloans and things like that.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
But it is a similar thing.
It's like the same kind of datathat a consumer that you could
underwrite a BNPL loan to aconsumer is very similar to the
ways that you would think aboutlending to a micro merchant, so
that's actually reallyfascinating.
Well, I okay, I'm gonna.
(23:54):
One last question what did youwin the Google Award for?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
No, we won the Google Award for the best FinTech
consumer app in Indonesia in2023.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And it sounds super well-deserved.
I think it's great and I'mreally glad to hear that you
like looking at both theconsumers and the micro
merchants.
I think that's going to beamazing in the long term.
I wish you all of the best.
Thank you, Rachel Thank you somuch for coming in today.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Just so I can end this on a semi-reasonable note.
Thank you to all of ourlisteners out there.
We love having you guys listento us here at the Money Pot,
Money 2020.
If you have an idea for apodcast that you would like to
do with us, please write us atpodcast at money2020.com.
Thank you, guys so much.
(24:50):
Have a great day.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Thank you.
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