Grab partners Lippo on mobile payment in Indonesia
JAKARTA: Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab said yesterday it is teaming up with Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group to roll out a mobile payment platform in its biggest market, extending its reach beyond transport.
The partnership, which would give Grab access to 50 million existing customers in Indonesia, was its first step to launching mobile payment solutions more widely across Southeast Asia, said the company.
“Grab’s partnership with the Lippo Group to develop a universal payments platform will be a leap forward for e-money in Indonesia,” said Anthony Tan, a Harvard Business School graduate who co-founded Grab in 2012.
Customers will be able to use the Grab app to make payments across Lippo’s retailers, including its department stores, cinemas and ecommerce sites.
Lippo director John Riady said last year that the Indonesian mediato-property conglomerate planned to launch payment, chat and other online services this year.
Starting as a taxi-hailing app in 2012, Grab has since expanded to private cars and motorbikes.
The company currently has 320,000 drivers in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
So far, Grab has raised US$700 million (RM2.8 billion) from investors, including Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, Japan’s SoftBank and an arm of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings.
Meanwhile, the Philippines had stopped accepting applications for new ride-sharing vehicles of Uber and Grab due to a backlog amid a government review of its policies on fare spikes, said a senior official.
It was the first country to regulate app-based car-hailing operations after coming out with rules last year.
“It’s just the new applications that we have to suspend so we don’t have a huge amount of backlog,” said Cherie Mercado, spokesman of the transportation department.
Applications had ballooned to record highs, with 29,000 pending, 23,000 of which were for Uber and the rest divided between Grab and u-Hop, she said.
Mercado said the suspension was indefinite and it was not clear what changes would be required to reverse it.
“We will also review the fare scheme, the surge pricing,” she said, referring to the fluctuating fare charges which had caused friction as conventional taxis were not allowed to apply them. Reuters A Grab rider seen during rush hour traffic in Jakarta. with Lippo would give the ride-hailing service company 50 million existing customers in Indonesia. Reuters pic