Grab confirmed that the company is currently in “intensive” talks with Bank Indonesia

Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab has officially halted credit top-up feature for its e-money service GrabPay, as the company is currently queuing in Bank Indonesia (BI) to secure its e-money operator license. The decision to halt the top-up feature followed a similar move recently made by Tokopedia’s TokoCash and Shopee’s ShopeePay.

The statement was announced by GrabPay Indonesia Managing Director Ongki Kurniawan, who revealed that the action was taken as part of the process of securing the operating license from the country’s central bank.

“Due to the extensive demand for GrabPay, as well as its considerably wide coverage and massive growth, we are currently undergoing the process of applying for [e-money] license with Bank Indonesia. As part of the process, we [need to] halt the top-up feature,” Kurniawan explained.

The decision refers to a regulation on e-money operation as made by BI in the Regulation No. 11/12/PBI/2009 and Circular Letter No. 16/11/DKSP (dated July 22, 2014) as amended by Circular Letter No. 18/21/DKSP (dated September 27, 2016).

Under this condition, for the time being GrabPay will not be able to top-up their credits though they are still able to utilise the remaining credits as usual.

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“… GrabPay can still be used by users who still have balance in GrabPay as usual, there is no changes [in how the service is being used]. Hopefully the licensing process can run smoothly so that the public can continue to use Grab’s cashless payment service GrabPay,” Kurniawan continued.

Related to the license application process, Kurniawan said that the company is currently undergoing “intensive” talks with BI. His hope is for the license to be issued as soon as possible and that users can go back into using GrabPay service for their daily needs.

“We are processing the license. We maintain an intensive discussion with BI. They certainly appreciate our initiative, especially since this is also in line with their mission of building a cashless society. So they are giving quite an attention to make sure that we can get through this process quickly,” Kurniawan said.

Towards a cashless society

It is hard to deny that the presence of cashless payment services such as GrabPay, Go-Pay, TokoCash, and ShopeePay have assisted the government in popularising the use of cashless payment among the society. Since it was launched in 2014, the cashless payment national movement has been followed by recent development in business and technology.

GrabPay and other cashless payment services are examples of contribution by startups in educating the society on the advantages of using cashless payment services, especially since the startups have begun expanding their businesses horizontally in order to cover more segments. Ease of transaction is the key strength offered by cashless payment service, followed by its security.

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The article Terbentur Kepemilikan Lisensi E-Money, GrabPay Hentikan Fasilitas Pengisian Saldo was written by Yenny Yusra and first appeared in DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

The post In its fight to secure e-money licensing, Grab halts GrabPay credit top-up feature appeared first on e27.