Grab Acquisition of OVO Shares from Tokopedia and Lippo, Now Controls Around 90% Ownership

Aiming to strengthen its position and compete with its competitors in financial services, Grab Holdings Inc. increased its ownership of OVO to around 90% by acquiring shares from Tokopedia and Lippo Group.

"We welcome a greater commitment from Grab at OVO. We are currently working and consulting with regulators to complete the ownership restructuring process, and believe this will enable us to better serve the financial service needs of the Indonesian people," said an OVO representative.

Prior to this acquisition process, PT Visionet Internasional [OVO] was part of PT Bumi Cakrawala Perkasa (BCP - OVO Group). As for the report MomentumWorks, BCP as of May 2019 owned the shares Grab (GP Network Asia) with a percentage of 41%; Tokopedia (PT Digital Investindo Jaya) 38%; Lippo Group (PT Inti Anugrah Pratama) 10%; and Tokyo Century Corporation 8%.

So far, OVO has become the main payment option in Indonesia Grab. This acquisition certainly has the potential to deepen synergies. For information, within the OVO Group there are also several other financial services, both from the acquisition process [Bareksa and Taralite] and strategic partnerships such as insurtech services which was established with ZA Tech [a subsidiary of ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance].

Payment application competition

In Indonesia, service competition e-money pretty tight. Gopay currently has the potential to become the main payment system in Indonesia holding GoTo -- previously OVO was the main payment option on Tokopedia. Gopay's integration into Tokopedia is getting deeper, recently they brought the Gopaylater service to the giants online marketplace The.

While Shopeepay and SPayLater are present as new players; With a large Shopee user ecosystem, this service is classified as very fast in penetrating. Some surveys place as top e-money currently in Indonesia. One of them from Ipsos Indonesia study results at the end of 2020; By focusing on the satisfaction level of the respondents, ShopeePay got the first rank with a score of 82%. This figure far exceeds other players such as Ovo (77%), Gopay (71%), Dana (69%), and LinkAja (67%).

Not to mention when talking about other players, such as DANA, which is now focusing on being super e-wallet for various financial needs such as bank transfers, bank account management etc.; LinkAja, which has a deeper penetration into the O2O market; to other players that have a smaller scale with a specific focus, for example AstraPay in the Astra Group ecosystem and MotionPay in the MNC Group.

Accommodating MSMEs

OVO President Director Karaniya Dharmasaputra revealed, currently more than 1 million MSME players have become entrepreneurs merchant OVO and accept digital payments via QRIS.

"In addition to being committed to embracing more business actors, entering the national digital ecosystem, OVO continues to strive to provide opportunities for MSME players to develop their businesses, through deepening digital financial literacy that specifically targets Indonesian entrepreneurs."

The CORE Indonesia survey shows, during the pandemic 10% of the population merchant OVO managed to maintain monthly income and 5% of MSMEs experienced an increase in monthly income. Currently, OVO is present in more than 430 cities and regencies.

The survey also revealed that after joining OVO, 71% of MSME players recorded sales transactions more regularly and accepted digital payment transactions, 68% had wider access to financial services, and 51% claimed to have a better understanding of using technology to maintain their business.

A similar strategy, by recruiting MSMEs to become tenant in the ecosystem, is also the standard for other payment services today. Like what LinkAja did by cooperating with sellers in various traditional markets. But actually with QRIS, MSME owners can provide a more general payment system. The reason is that one QR code displayed can be used to accept payments from various types of applications e-money.

Refine service integration

To expand the range of use, OVO also continues to expand partnerships with strategic partners. From the list submitted, currently OVO is claimed to have been integrated into various systems as shown in the image below.

But when we checked, on Google Play, App Store, and Netflix until now (04/10) there is no payment option with OVO. It's probably in the exploratory or service integration stage, and will be coming in the near future. If the process is complete, OVO will accompany you fintech other local payments such as Gopay, Shopeepay, DANA, and DOKU which have previously become an option for payments at the application marketplace.

"Since the beginning of its existence, OVO has implemented an open ecosystem strategy, where we provide flexibility for OVO to be able to work together or collaborate with any industry line related to our services," said OVO Head of Corporate Communications Harumi Supit to DailySocial.id.