Bukalapak and Bank Mandiri Add Rows of Stall Empowerment Efforts for Financial Agents

Strategies to attract grocery stalls as financial service agents getting noticed, both corporations and startups. After BRI and Grab, this year Bukalapak is collaborating with Bank Mandiri to realize the plan.

As quoted Reuters some time ago, Bukalapak and Mandiri tried to push the segment micro retailers by increasing the role of warungs through officeless financial service agents. The two are currently developing a collaborative model for this collaboration.

By using it as a financial agent, the existence of a warung can help people who don't have money smartphone to access financial services, especially basic services such as account opening.

Contacted DailySocial, Bukalapak did not specify how it plans to develop a financial service agent with Mandiri in the future. However, the Director of Payment, Fintech and Virtual Products of Bukalapak, Victor Lesmana, ensures that this collaboration can empower Warung Mitra Bukalapak and utilize QRIS (Quick Response Indonesian Standard) for payment transactions.

They hope Bukalapak Partner Shop can be 'change agents' to pave the way to financial inclusivity. This is because warungs dominate as much as 65%-70% of retail transactions in Indonesia. This means that the existence of warungs is expected not only to promote economic prosperity, but also to help reduce economic inequality.

"This collaboration is to increase access to financial services, especially those who do not have access to banking, namely: underbanked and unbanked. The use of QRIS makes Mandiri the bank with the largest ATM network in Indonesia," he said.

Furthermore, Victor said that currently Warung Mitra Bukalapak can access the Send Money service. This feature allows shop owners to help people send money.

Meanwhile, since early 2020, Bukalapak has launched several other features for Warung Mitra Bukalapak, namely: Pay Tempo, top up e-money, and Millionaires to provide added value for income and capabilities. As of July 2020, there are 5,5 million Warung Mitra Bukalapak spread across 189 cities and regencies throughout Indonesia.

DailySocial have contacted Mandiri regarding this matter, but there has been no further response.

Financial access to unbanked

The entry of Bukalapak and Mandiri adds to the series of partnerships and similar services being carried out Grab and BRI. In this case, BRI through BRILink and Grab Indonesia via GrabKiosk utilizes QRIS as a payment system.

As of June 2020, there are 429 thousand customers who are agents BRILink, 13 thousand of whom are already using the QRIS system. Temporary GrabStall which has been present since 2014, has pocketed more than 2,8 million partners with a network spread across 505 cities and regencies in Indonesia.

This signifies how the financial and digital industries see warungs as touchpoints the right way to reach the community unbanked and underbanked.

In addition to stalls, the banking sector has also become more aggressive in collaborating with startups to expand access to financial services in recent years by making them as partners front-end platform. The vertical business platforms targeted are various, ranging from ride hailing, marketplace, up to P2P lending.

BRI, for example, has partnered Grab, Tokopedia, and Traveloka to open financial access, such as account opening and online lending. Even recently, BRI opened channel specifically for account opening that is completely digital-based, including the KYC process.

Not only that, the financial industry is also anticipating the big plans of a number of banks to realize this digital bank with entity and Branding new. Whatever the collaboration and product, banking innovations and startups want to support equitable access to finance.

A report by Google, Temasek, Bain & Company in October 2019 noted that there were 92 million Indonesians who entered the segment unbanked (50,83%), followed by segment banked as many as 42 million people (23,20%), and the segment underbanked 47 million (25,97%)