LinkAja Syariah to be Released in November, Aiming for 1 Million Users by 2020

Ambition LinkAja to have a sharia-managed payment system will soon be realized. The plan is that this new feature will be released in November 2019. This target a little bit late from the original plan.

Today (16/9) the National Sharia Council of the Indonesian Ulema Council (DSN MUI) has submitted a certificate of conformity with sharia 'LinkAja Syariah'. After this certificate, LinkAja will take care of permission to add features to Bank Indonesia, the electronic money regulator in Indonesia.

LinkAja has formed a Sharia Supervisory Board consisting of Anwar Abbas, Zainut Tauhid, and Asep Supyadillah. This DPS is one of the requirements that must be met when you want to run a business with a sharia contract.

Group Head Sales Channel & Sharia Unit LinkAja Widjayanto Djaenudin said the process at BI would take about 40 working days after completing the complete documents. If nothing goes wrong, it is hoped that LinkAja Syariah can launch in November 2019.

He emphasized that LinkAja Syariah will be a feature on the LinkAja platform. In terms of service, it will not be much different from regular, but there are three main differences that make it compliant with sharia.

First, the placement of money floating must be in Islamic banks whose parent is included in the BUKU IV category. To meet this requirement, LinkAja is collaborating with three state-owned sharia banks, namely Bank Mandiri Syariah, BNI Syariah, and BRI Syariah.

Although LinkAja's funds will be accommodated by Islamic banks, top up balances can be made through conventional banks. "In the future, we will also open collaborations with other Islamic banks," said Widjayanto, quoted from Republika.

Second, its operations use contracts that are in accordance with sharia. Finally, services and promotions will be adjusted to sharia provisions.

President Director of LinkAja Danu Wicaksana added, LinkAja Syariah will be here to support the government's and many parties' initiatives to improve economic competitiveness in their own country, regionally and internationally.

"We hope that when it is launched, this service option can support the non-cash national movement in Indonesia," said Danu in an official statement.

Widjayanto continued, apart from being a means of payment, it can be used for donations, zakat, infaq, and alms. LinkAja Syariah also has the potential to be used to pay school fees for Islamic boarding schools.

Indonesia has more than 30 thousand Islamic boarding schools with a total of 4 million students. Other potential markets that are also being looked at are 25 million sharia banking customers and 48 thousand sharia bank employees.

He targets, LinkAja Syariah can migrate 1 million users from LinkAja until 2020. Currently LinkAja is claimed to have 30 million users.