Status of mobile payment market in Indonesia: local apps still dominate, with the most active users of Go-pay

Mobile payments are becoming increasingly popular with Indonesians in Indonesia.

Despite the limitations of the development level of Internet, financial industry, electronic information technology and uneven economic and educational development, but thanks to its large population base, Indonesia is considered a big country for Internet users with great potential in the future.

Although Indonesia’s Internet development started late, but in recent years the momentum of rapid development, and has distinctive characteristics. In line with this is Indonesia’s internet business, although the start of a late, but the growth rate is very fast.



In the past five years, smartphone usage has reached 70%. Meanwhile, Indonesia is a big country of social software, and even the development of Internet business is highly dependent on social platforms.

Social networking is one of the most important and high-profile areas in the development of the Internet. Indonesia is known as the world’s social media capital, and smartphone-loving Indonesians are keen to use social software on mobile devices, making it Facebook’s third-largest user market after the United States and India.

With the increasing penetration of smart phones, Indonesia’s mobile digital payment system has great potential for development.

At the same time, more and more e-wallets can be card-free transactions. According to Indonesia’s central bank, 38 e-wallets have been officially licensed.

In 2018, the value of electronic wallet transactions in Indonesia was around $1.5 billion, which is expected to increase to $25 billion by 2023.

According to a 2017 report by Jakpat, an Indonesian market research firm, many indonesians say they will use mobile payments more frequently.

To keep up to date with the market, Jakpat again surveyed the mobile payment market as follows:

1.Go-pay and mobile banking were the two most popular types of mobile payment.

2. More than 50% of respondents used mobile payment services such as mobile phone call recharge, online shopping and money transfer.

3. “convenience” is the primary reason why the vast majority of respondents (nearly 60%) use mobile payments.

4.More than 73 percent of respondents said they would use more types of mobile payments in the future, including mobile banking, Mandiri’s ecash and Tcash.

5.Airports, train stations, cafes and restaurants are places where most (60%) of respondents often pay for mobile payments.



According to data from 38 legitimate e-wallets, offline transactions are the most common scenario for e-wallets, mainly because of cash returns and points. The second is e-commerce and Shared travel.

There are also differences between wallets, such as DANA, which can be used for game payments, while the most common scenario for OVO is Grab’s co-payment.

So, who is the most popular e-wallet in Indonesia?

Recently, iPrice Group and App Annie jointly released the data of downloads and monthly active users of electronic wallet in Indonesia. From these ranking data, we can summarize some characteristics:

1. Go-Pay has the most active users, and OVO has a strong growth momentum.

Go-Pay is not yet independent from the Go-Jek main program, but it is already the largest number of active e-wallets from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the second quarter of 2019, with 30 percent of online payments coming from Go-Pay.

In February 2019, Go-pay reached $6.3 billion, or nearly 70 percent of all go-jek transactions. Go-Pay is also one of the payment methods for Go-Food, southeast Asia’s largest food delivery app.

OVO has been steady in second place since the third quarter of 2018. OVO is an offline payment channel for Matahari department stores, Lippo Mall and major cinemas, and is also a partner of Grab and Tokopedia.

The third and fourth are LinkAja with a state bank background and DANA with an ant financial background.

2. Local applications still dominate

According to Annie App’s rankings for the second quarter of 2019, the top five players are all local indonesians — go-pay, OVO, DANA, LinkAja and Jenius.

3. Cashback and points activities are the key to attracting users

The current competition is very fierce. Take Go-Pay, which has the largest number of active users, and provides up to 20-40% cashback for food, beverage and other categories. According to statistics, cashback can increase sales by 37%.

5. QR code payment (QR Pay) is the most commonly used method of payment

QR Pay or QRC is the most commonly used payment method for EWallet Indonesia. Of the 38 legitimate e-wallets, 19 can use QR codes.

In May 2019, Indonesia’s central bank launched the Indonesian standard qr code system (QRIS), which aims to popularize non-cash payments nationwide. The system will allow users to transfer money from one payment service provider to another in the central bank ecosystem, provided at least one party owns the QRIS code.