Credit card ownership in Indonesia has risen at an anaemic 2.3% CAGR over the past 10 years, this despite an absolute burgeoning in use cases such as e-commerce and other forms of consumption in the country. JP Morgan for instance last year estimated that there were a mere 0.59 e-commerce enabled debit cards per capita and 0.07 e-commerce enabled credit cards per capita in Indonesia.

Our guest this week is Akshay Garg, Cofounder and CEO of FinAccel, which operates Kredivo, its flagship “Buy now, Pay later” solution. Akshay reflects on the company's dual obsession with: a) improving access to credit for Indo consumers and b) reducing e-commerce payment frictions. Akshay views an early call to build Kredivo's own tech stack in areas such as credit scoring as invaluable to the company's dominance in the space, both as an e-commerce check-out option and across other Point-of-Sale (POS) use cases.

While COVID drove a sudden 50% decline in activity earlier this year, Akshay indicates that Kredivo's business is now at better than pre-COVID levels.  The pandemic had slowed regional expansion, but Akshay expects to add 1-2 markets over the next several months, while looking into new lines such as education & healthcare loan products.

Competition in online payments is intense. And while the "buy-now-pay-later" space similarly remains competitive, Kredivo intends to deepen its symbiosis with Indonesia's leading e-commerce platforms as a leading check-out solution, much in the same way PayPal has in the US, or Klarna has in Europe.

(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia di sini)...