Finnet, Indonesia’s leading electronic payment provider and member of Telkom Group, signed an agreement with Cellum on the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Finnet has chosen the Cellum Mobile Next platform as the foundation of its soon-to-launch mobile payment and commerce services. The company will service its telco, utility and merchant partners with state-of-the-art, secure proximity and remote digital payment solutions, including mobile parking, airtime top-up, utility bill payment and in-store purchases using QR codes in the initial phase, in which customers can use their mobile wallets and any sources of funds. Further services and additional funding sources – including bank cards – will also be implemented at a later stage.
Cellum will take the role of platform provider by providing banking-grade PCI-DSS compliant back-end and payment applications to approximately 150 million smartphone users as potential clients. The service will be operator-agnostic, available for both banked and unbanked individuals, and thus will promote financial inclusion in the country of nearly 260 million. The partners have agreed to launch the service during the second half of 2017.
Mobile phone penetration in Indonesia is at 126%, almost half of which is represented by smartphones, while nearly two thirds of the country is still unbanked, so the demand for secure mobile transactions is particularly high. Telkomsel, the mobile carrier subsidiary of Telkom Group, alone has a 44% share of the mobile market.
“We are bringing next-generation mobile commerce services to the partnership. Transactions will be secure and quick, with the best-in-class user experience for smartphone customers. Southeast Asia, and within it Indonesia especially, plays a key role in Cellum’s market strategy,” said Cellum CEO János Kóka.
Niam Dzikri, CEO of Finnet added: “Finnet and Cellum jointly possess all ingredients for a successful digital payment transformation in Indonesia. As an aggregator of utility bills, mobile top-up services and merchant solutions, we want to make transactions cheaper, more secure, convenient and ubiquitously available to our partners and customers.”