Tcash Officially Merges to LinkAja, Danu Wicaksana Leads Finarya

Friday (2/22), Telkomsel's e-money service is officially merged into LinkAja. Tcash's President Director, Danu Wicaksana is appointed to lead the service under PT Fintek Karya Nusantara (Finarya).

In the official release to DailySocial, Wicaksana said there's no different service from Tcash to LinkAja. Users can use Tcash as per usual.

However, LinkAja will introduce some new features soon. "We'll be developing some new features of LinkAja in time," he added.

LinkAja is a QR Code-based payment system to be managed by alliance of four state-owned banks (Mandiri, BNI, BRI, and BTN), Telkomsel, and Pertamina.

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

An interesting news arose, Jiwasraya is to involve in LinkAja shareholders. Telkomsel will acquire 25%, followed by BNI, BRI, and Mandiri of 20%. Both BTN and Pertamina will have 7% each, and 1% for Jiwasraya.

Strategy to compete with Ovo and Go-Pay

The plan of state-owned companies to create its own payment system has spread since the late 2018. In fact, rumor has it that they will partner with WeChat Pay and Alipay.

Soon after that, the state-owned alliance announces to launch QR Code-based payment system, LinkAja, in the late January 2019. To date, state-owned companies involved are sealed when it comes to LinkAja's development in the future.

One that is certain, LinkAja is developed to break Go-Pay and Ovo's domination in Indonesia.

"It was because Go-Pay and Ovo is strong, it triggers state-owned companies to make synergy. Previously, each company work independently. Mrs. Rini (Ministry of State-owned companies) wants to merge the whole effort to LinkAja," David Bangun, Telkom's Digital and Strategic Portfolio Director said, not long time ago.

Based on DailySocial's Fintech Report 2018, Go-Pay is the most popular with 79.39% of the respondents have tried the app, followed by Ovo at 58.42%, and Tcash 55.52%

Difficult to access

Until this afternoon, LinkAja users still complain about the difficulty to access the app. It has been going on since this morning.

DailySocial has tried to login. The first time, it succeed. The second trial and the next ones did not.

The access is using cellphone number. When logging in, user will receive verification code sent to the cellphone number. Unfortunately, after the verification code entered, it keeps loading and not getting into the app.

In its official release, Wicaksana said the LinkAja system is currently upgrading because the high demand of users. He guarantee the account safety with its balance.

""LinkAja's technical team is trying to make it easier for user to acces the app. We're very sorry for the inconvenience in accessing LinkAja," he said.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian