Indonesia-based digital wallet OVO is teaming up with financial marketplace Bareksa and Bahana TCW Investment Management in order to introduce a fixed-income product.
The Bahana MES Syariah Fund Kelas O is reportedly being offered only via the OVO app as part of the digital wallet’s investment unit.
This is reportedly the latest addition to a range of reasonably-priced digital financial product offerings available via the OVO platform, all of which are currently offered along with a minimum buy-in of IDR 10,000 (appr. $0.70) and seamless buy-in using the online wallet’s payment capability.
OVO’s management stated that it’s well-positioned to promote grassroots investment penetration by leveraging its domestic payment platform.
Since branching out from digital payments into broader financial services, OVO has introduced various economical digital financial products and provides such solutions with business partners like Manulife Asset Manajemen Indonesia, which is a collaborative initiative with Adira Finance operating as a subsidiary of Bank Danamon and part of the international financial group MUFG, a tie-up with state-owned Bank BRI.
David Sondakh, SVP Investments at OVO, stated:
“In just ten months, OVO, as a trusted and well-known digital payment platform, has successfully established itself in the investment space with a number of well-received products. By enabling users to invest seamlessly on their handphones and setting the minimum investment threshold to one of the lowest in the industry at just IDR 10,000, – (SGD$1 or USD$ 0.70), OVO has been able to effectively reach out to users and empower them to invest, in line with OVO’s commitment to make financial services more accessible to the Indonesian people.”
As covered in September 2021, Kadence International Indonesia had shared the findings of a new research study, titled Digital Payments and Financial Services Usage and Behavior in Indonesia.
The extensive report is reportedly based on an online survey of 1,000 respondents carried out in July of this year in large cities across Indonesia, including Greater Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Makassar, Medan, and Palembang.
The Kadence report looked at the different consumer behavior patterns of various users on 14 major online payment platforms, which are led by OVO, and closely followed by other virtual payments companies GoPay, ShopeePay, and DANA.
The survey report reveals that during the past three months (as of September 2021), around 44% of the respondents had used these platforms to conduct virtual payments at least 4 times per week. Respondents claim they performed 5 different types of online or digital transactions (via telephone credit, food order, online shopping, bills payment and transportation), and they made several offline transactions (at 1-2 merchants weekly).
