Indonesian start-up Go-Jek to mimic Alipay and WeChat with e-payment platform

Go-Jek, Indonesian transportation start-up, is hoping to expand its payments business to imitate the cusses of AliPay and WeChat Pay (owned by Alibaba and Tencent respectively) in China.

This year, WeChat became China’s first $100bn brand largely down to the WeChat Pay service, which has doubtless encouraged Go-Jek to push its payment platform, Go-Pay.

Andre Soelistyo, president of Go-Jek, spoke to CNBC about the project, stating he felt the market for cashless payments was ‘ripe’ in Indonesia.

The company originated as a motorbike and taxi hailing company but has since expanded its products to food delivery, groceries and payments through Go-Pay.

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The company has a fleet of over 200,000 drivers across motorbikes, trucks and cars. It has expressed hopes to go beyond Indonesia, and is looking primarily toward Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

All this comes despite Paypal’s recent study, detailed here, which reported that cash is still very much the preferred payment method in Asia. Paypal polled 4000 consumers in India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines and found 57% of respondents still preferred to pay in cash for day-to-day transactions. This figure stood at over 70% in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Soelistyo stated to CNBC that “Go-Pay is going to be the front product that will expand in a very aggressive way… in China, you have Alipay and WeChat Pay… I think we want to replicate that kind of success in Indonesia.”

He added that in order to emulate this success, physical services need to be digitalised in Indonesia such as bill payments, in-game purchases, digital products, and train tickets.