Grab is making the move. According to an exclusive report on Reuters, Grab is in talks to merge OVO with DANA. This move will cause a turbulence on the Indonesian digital payment industry.
OVO is Grab’s digital payment service provider in Indonesia. Owned by Indonesia’s property conglomerate, Lippo Group, it has been thriving through the country digital payment service since it first launched in 2017.
But it has not yet been able to beat out Gojek’s Gopay in the industry. The rank by App Annie and iPrice Group showed Gopay at the top of the ranking. And OVO stays at the second place, with huge amount of monthly active users and download.
Meanwhile, DANA has been battling with the government owned LinkAja. Experts stated that the Ant-Financial backed platform plays a promising game, with a feature that links the account’s balance to their game account.
OVO-DANA vs Gojek’s Gopay
Together, OVO and DANA will surely pose a threat to Gojek’s throne. Moreover, Finance Asia puts OVO’s valuation in $2.9 billion. That, plus DANA’s growing popularity due to the huge cashbacks are an impending storm to Gopay.
SoftBank Japan, the main supporter of Grab has reportedly supports this proposal. Previously, Softbank CEO Masayosho Son visited Jakarta in July, announcing the upcoming $2 billion investment to the country through Grab.
However the road to this merge would not be easy. The regulation in the country makes it difficult for foreign ownerships, sources said.
The e-wallet industry in Indonesia itself is a promising field. Many of the 260 million people in the country do not have bank accounts. But the country has growing record of mobile transactions in a lot fields including financial services, e-commerce, ride-hailing and food delivery.
Grab and Gojek have been going on an endless battle for the title of the biggest startup in Southeast Asia. The Singapore-based Grab is valued at $14 billion while Indonesia-based Gojek at $10 billion.
