WhatsApp Payment Grabs Attention of Ex-minister Rudiantara

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The former Communication and Informatics Minister Rudiantara in Tuesday’s virtual discussion predicts the digital payment service from WhatsApp, enabled via Facebook Pay, would be a serious competition if the dominant messaging app decides to introduce it in Indonesia. 

This situation would force domestic digital payment services such as Gopay and LinkAja to compete with more competitors providing similar payment services, especially with Whatsapp’s large user base in Indonesia and Facebook as its backer. 

“The biggest threat from WhatsApp is Facebook. WhatsApp users in Indonesia are massive. As an investor, numbers are taken into account,” said Rudiantara on Tuesday, June 23. 

The service was announced in a Whatsapp blog post on June 15, stating that it will provide app users in Brazil with digital payment services. The post states that it will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi on the Visa and Mastercard networks -and we are working with Cielo, the leading payments processor in Brazil. We have built an open model to welcome more partners in the future.

Rudiantara mentioned about elevating Indonesia’s economic scale through a multiplatform merger as a way to compete on a global stage.

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ANTARA