Indonesia’s ‘ewallet freeze’ slows down partnership between Uber and Tokopedia

Uber and Tokopedia are teaming up.

Uber Indonesia and one of the country’s largest homegrown ecommerce startups, Tokopedia, are working on integrating their services.

The first public sign of a budding relationship between the two startup heavyweights is a recent update to Tokopedia’s FAQs.

It says its users can now order an Uber ride through the Tokopedia app, without signing up to Uber first. Uber cannot be used as a delivery service yet, it adds.

Uber and Tokopedia spokespersons have confirmed that the integration is on its way, but that it’s currently only available to a subset of users.

The process still faces one major hurdle, we learned from a source who was directly working on the project. It has to do with the plan for Uber to tap Tokopedia’s ewallet, TokoCash, for mobile payments.

Seamless payments next

In India, Uber already works with Paytm.

Right now, Uber in Indonesia only takes cash or credit card payments. Unlike its local ride-hailing rivals Grab and Go-Jek, Uber hasn’t developed its own mobile wallet.

Instead, Uber has been diversifying its range of accepted third-party payment methods to include mobile wallets like Alipay, PayPal, and so on – depending on what’s popular in each country.

In India, Uber works with Paytm. In China, ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing – which acquired Uber’s China division – accepts Alipay and WeChat Pay, among others.

Tokopedia is one of Indonesia’s most popular shopping destinations with millions of merchants buying and selling through the app, which makes its wallet a likely candidate for Uber. Shoppers use TokoCash to pay for products and settle bills. If the same balance could also be used for rides and Uber’s additional services, like ordering food or parcel delivery, this would have obvious advantages.

However, Tokopedia recently had to put key functions of its ewallet on hold due to pending regulatory approval. This has delayed the integration with Uber, according to our source.

The Indonesian central bank cracked down on several large startups who haven’t had their emoney license approved – besides Tokopedia, the ewallet freeze now also affects Bukalapak and Shopee.

Despite the hiccup, Tokopedia’s leadership believes that the Uber rides and TokoCash payments partnership can be rolled out to more users over the coming weeks. It also doesn’t see this as an exclusive deal with Uber. “We are in touch with other ride-sharing services as well and we hope to on-board some of them in future,” Amit Lakhotia, Tokopedia’s VP of Digital, tells Tech in Asia.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/uber-plus-tokopedia
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