Tcash Officially Merged into LinkAja, Danu Wicaksana Leads Finarya

Today, Friday (22/2), the electronic money service or e-money belongs to Telkomsel officially merged into LinkAja. President Director of Tcash Danu Wicaksana was appointed to lead this service under PT Fintek Karya Nusantara (Finarya).

In the official statement that DailySocial Thank you, Danu said that there would be no service change from Tcash to LinkAja. Tcash users can use this service as usual.

However, LinkAja will present a number of new features in the future. "We will develop new features from LinkAja from time to time," said Danu.

LinkAja is a Quick Response (QR) Code-based payment system that will be managed by a joint venture of four state-owned banks (Mandiri, BNI, BRI, and BTN), Telkomsel, and Pertamina.

After Tcash, will follow server-based e-money platforms owned by state-owned banks, such as BRI's My QR and Yap! from BNI, which will merge into the LinkAja payment system in early March.

Interestingly, Jiwasraya will join the ranks of LinkAja's shareholders. Telkomsel will later pocket 25 percent ownership, followed by BNI, BRI, and Mandiri 20 percent. Both BTN and Pertamina own 7 percent, while Jiwasraya owns 1 percent.

Strategies for dealing with Ovo and Go-Pay

The SOE's plan to work on its own payment system has been widely discussed since the end of 2018. In fact, at that time, the information circulating stated that SOEs would partner with WeChat Pay and Alipay.

Not long ago, the SOE joint venture announced that it would launch a QR Code-based payment system LinkAja at the end of January 2019. Until now, all state-owned companies involved in this joint venture are still holding meetings on how to develop LinkAja in the future.

To be sure, LinkAja was deliberately prepared to break the dominance of Go-Pay and Ovo in the Indonesian fintech market.

"Precisely because GoPay and OVO are strong, it triggers awareness of the need for SOE synergy. Previously, each BUMN developed independently, Mrs. Rini [Minister of BUMN] wanted to combine all of them Yago's defensive effort into LinkAja,” explained Telkom Director of Digital and Strategic Portfolio David Bangun when we contacted him some time ago.

Based on the 2018 Fintech Report released DailySocial, Go-Pay leads in terms of popularity with 79,39 percent of respondents who have used it, followed by Ovo 58,42 percent, and Tcash 55,52 percent.

Still difficult to access

Until this afternoon, LinkAja users complained about the difficulty of accessing the application. Difficulty accessing (login) to the LinkAja application has been happening since this morning.

DailySocial had time to try login to this application. When login first, access is successful. But on the second try and so on, we couldn't get into the app.

Access to the application using a mobile number. And to login, the user will receive a verification code sent to the mobile number. Unfortunately, after the verification code is entered, proceed loading keeps running and won't get into the app.

In his official statement, Danu said that the LinkAja system is currently in the process upgrade due to the high number of downloads from users. It ensures that user accounts and balances are kept safe.

“LinkAja's technical team is working to make it easier for customers to access this application. We apologize for your inconvenience in accessing the LinkAja service," he said.