4th June, 2020: Social media giant Facebook and PayPal invested in Indonesia based ride-hailing and digital payment startup Gojek.
The size of the deal has not been disclosed yet.
Gojek announced today that Facebook and PayPal have joined Google, Tencent, and others as investors in its current fundraise. This new investment will support Gojek’s mission to boost Southeast Asia’s digital economy, with a focus on supporting payments and financial services in the region.” company said in a statement.
Starting as a ride-hailing service in 2010, Gojek launched an app five years later that soon turned into a “super-app” offering a wide range of services including deliveries, takeaway food and financial services.
The investment is Facebook’s first in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s leading economy. Facebook’s Whatsapp & PayPal’s payment services are also expected to be integrated into the Gojek app as part of the agreement.
“Gojek, WhatsApp, and Facebook are indispensable services in Indonesia,” Matt Idema, chief operating officer at WhatsApp, said in the statement.
“Working together we can help bring millions of small businesses and the customers they serve into the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia.”
Gojek raised $1.2 billion in March and it is valued at $10 billion by analysts CB Insights.
Indonesia’s digital sector was estimated at $40 billion in 2019 and could triple by 2025, according to a study by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company.
Gojek’s payments business, GoPay, has long been focused on increasing access to the digital economy among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the majority of which continue to rely on cash to operate, due to the region’s large unbanked population.
The latest influx of funding will support more of these businesses as they seek to digitise further, from micro-merchants selling wares on the street side, up to large businesses looking to strengthen their digital payment infrastructure.
Since launching its app in 2015, Gojek has digitised hundreds of thousands of merchants on its platform, providing them with access to more than 170 million users across Southeast Asia.
Its payments business processes billions of transactions each year and owns the largest e-wallet in Indonesia.
A large part of this is driven by GoFood, the largest food delivery service in Indonesia, as well as the expansion of GoPay into other sectors both within and outside the Gojek ecosystem.
Gojek competes with another payment startup Grab in Southeast Asia.