Through the joint venture, the two companies will launch a new mobile platform for payment and other financial services.
Initially, the payment platform will be provided on BBM, a widely used messenger application in the country.
BBM, which has a user base of more than 63 million monthly active users in Indonesia, is operated by a subsidiary of Emtek.
Besides serving BBM users, the joint venture will offer its mobile technology to e-commerce, over-the-top (OTT) and online-to-offline (020) services, merchants and platforms.
It will leverage Ant Financial’s experience and know-how in mobile payment, digital financial innovations, risk control and cloud computing.
Emtek CEO Alvin Sariaatmadja said: “We are excited to be working with Ant Financial to bring world leading mobile payment solutions and technology to Indonesia. This agreement represents each organization’s strong and long term commitment to provide our users across our digital platforms, the wider Indonesian population and partners, efficient, secure and user friendly payments solutions.
"Ant Financial has proven know-how in delivering payment and other financial solutions to a large and growing mobile audience in China and enabling its partners globally, and we are looking forward to replicating and creating this success in Indonesia.”
Indonesia’s media major said that BBM has evolved from a pure messaging application (text and video) to a social eco-system unifying chat, social, commerce and services such as bill payments, top- up, and vouchers/coupons, among others.
The joint venture will also provide payment solutions to other e-commerce players in the country.
