Indonesians of all walks of life are becoming major users of digital payment platforms.
According to a survey conducted by Kadence, a London-based marketing research agency, over the last three months, 44 percent of respondents used these platforms to make online digital payments.
Not only are they being used, but digital platforms are being used frequently. Kadence surveyed over one thousand consumers in Indonesia’s six largest cities during the month of July 2021. It found that these same respondents are using digital channels to make payments four times a week.
They are doing so for online transactions such as telephone top-ups, food orders, shopping, paying bills, and transportation. They are also using digital platforms to make offline transactions with one or two merchants each week.
The report examined behavior patterns of active users on 14 digital payment platforms.
OVO dominates as the clear leader, Kadence says. GoPay, ShopeePay and DANA also have significant market share.
These results reflect the changes in Indonesian consumers’ behavior triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the research firm says, as the public has shifted to adopt digital behaviors including digital transactions and digital payments. According to Bank of Indonesia, the central bank, e-money transactions rose from IDR145 trillion (about $70 million) in 2019 to IDR205 trillion ($143.5 million) in 20201. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
Brand awareness was highest for OVO and GoPay. 96 percent of the Kadence survey respondents mentioning that they are familiar with it OVO, while and 95 percent recognized GoPay and 93 percent know DANA.
Active usage broadly reflected brand awareness, but not precisely. OVO also enjoyed the most active usage, at 71 percent of respondents, followed by GoPay at 64 percent.
However, ShopeePay trumped DANA in terms of active users, with 57 percent of users stating they had actively used ShopeePay compared to 46 percent for DANA.
OVO led in online and offline transactions generally, which Kadence attributed to its open ecosystem strategy and positioning as a universal digital payment platform. Reasons for choosing OVO included ease of use of the application, perceived security and confidentiality, and being highly recommended by many people, as well as ability to earn loyalty points.
For example, OVO led in both online food orders as well as traditional food stall purchases (offline transaction) with 81 percent of OVO respondents ordering online food online and 38 percent of OVO users using OVO to make traditional food stall purchases.
GoPay was a tight second for online food orders with 75 percent of its respondents using the platform for online food orders, while for traditional food stall purchases, DANA users showed the second highest level of activity with 36 percent of DANA respondents saying that they had used the platform to make purchases at traditional food stalls.
However, ShopeePay was favored by respondents for e-commerce transactions, citing low top-up costs and numerous attractive promotions related to for daily necessities such as household appliances, personal necessities, health care products and electronic goods available for purchase on the e- commerce platform of its parent company.
There are also differences of demographics. Working-age people prefer OVO, while GoPay and ShopeePay are primarily used by people aged 18 to 24 years. While OVO is used equally by men and women, GoPay users are mostly men, while ShopeePay users are mostly women.
Lastly, given that digital financial services are a fast growing market, the Kadence survey looked at awareness of financial services on these digital payment platforms.
OVO, which bills itself as a digital payment and financial services provider, recorded the highest score for financial services generally, with 63 percent of respondents saying they were familiar with the investment feature in OVO and 44 percent of them having used the feature.
Meanwhile, buy-now, pay-later feature awareness was highest for ShopeePay (59 percent) and GoPay (50 percent).
