While Indonesia has a massive population of 250 million people, only around 15 million have credit cards, and that makes it hard for e-commerce companies to receive payments from would-be online shoppers. In the final clip of Borderless News Online’s interview with Internet guru Shinta Witoyo Dhanuwardoyo, the managing partner of Nusantara Ventures talks about the payment challenges of Indonesia’s e-commerce companies.
“Even though we’re 255 million people, there’s only probably like 15 million credit card users. That’s very small. And that means payment is a problem for us. Because usually when you talk about e-commerce, you pay with credit card. It’s not about people being scared to put their numbers online, its also we don’t have even enough people out of that (large) population, but we only have about 15 million credit card users. So how do we solve that problem?,” said Dhanuwardoyo, who founded one of Indonesia’s first Internet companies, Bubu.com.
She added that she’s spoken to the government, which is trying to come up with a solution for that problem.
There are a number of options on the table besides credit cards to make payment easier for a broader range of people who might not have credit cards. But in the end what’s important is what people actually adopts, she said.
“We just need to see who are going to be THE players. Because at the end of the day it’s about adoption, how people actually feel comfortable about adopting which payment system that we’ll have in the country,” she said.
She added that the government needs robust policy on the issue.
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