The Southeast Asian open finance platform Ayoconnect and Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Indonesia’s largest bank by total assets, have come together to generate greater financial inclusivity and economic growth in Indonesia; the world’s fourth most populous country.
The two companies are to incorporate Ayoconnect’s open finance technology with BRI’s digital banking solutions with the intention to generate greater financial inclusivity and economic growth.
Ayoconnect’s open finance platform makes it more economic for BRI and its business customers to launch new financial services, accelerating the availability of affordable access to finance for all Indonesian citizens.
Despite its transformational economic growth, Southeast Asia’s financial infrastructure remains a significant challenge to building an inclusive financial system. As an example of this problem, over half of Indonesians don’t have a bank account.
The partnership will build upon the existing collaboration between Ayoconnect and BRI via a new direct debit capability that will allow BRI’s merchant partners to deduct payments directly from their customers’ bank accounts.
This direct debit function will reportedly launch sometime later this year and would mark the first-ever direct debit payment product for the Indonesian market, simplifying operations for banks, improving cash-flow and working capital for companies, and making life simpler and more convenient for people in their daily lives.
Ayoconnect focuses its service on the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), as a proven, low-cost way to connect banks, companies, governments, and people.
Instead of being built from scratch or requiring new technology to be purchased, APIs allow a company to launch financial products such as phone top-up, utility payments, embedded insurance and auto-billing.
Arga Nugraha, BRI’s Managing Director of Digital and Information Technology Bank Rakyat Indonesia, comments: “BRI continues its digital transformation journey on our mission to become the most valuable banking group in Southeast Asia and a champion of financial inclusion.
“The collaboration between BRI and Ayoconnect reflects our commitment to collaborate and grow together in delivering digital financial services that are accessible, answering to the market needs and rapid change of the digital era.”
The partnership lets Ayoconnect leverage BRI’s open banking APIs for uses such as cardless cash withdrawals, e-money top-up, transaction history; enabling BRI to launch innovative new digital services and improve customer experience.
In addition, Ayoconnect’s ecosystem partners will now be able to utilise these APIs to provide B2B and B2C services more easily and quickly. Ayoconnect’s open banking API is part of its larger open finance ecosystem, which aims to interconnect not only Indonesia’s banked population but also its underbanked and unbanked population too.
Ayoconnect’s CEO and Founder Jakob Rost added: “By collaborating more closely with BRI, one of Indonesia’s largest banks with decades of experience and insight, we are in a better position to identify solutions to benefit the Indonesian economy and then make them available to businesses and consumers.
“Ayoconnect’s API-led approach means banks and businesses can interconnect their systems economically. Customers get access to financial services that are more seamless and affordable and companies can launch financial features within a few weeks, directly contributing to new revenue and growth.”
