The Great Synergy of Bank Jago with Bibit and Gojek Ecosystem

PT Bank Jago Tbk (IDX: ARTO) officially launched the Jago banking application in early April 2021. Three months after launching to date, the application currently has 4.1 star rating with total downloads reaching nearly half a million.

Jago app offers some excellent features that are said to provide freedom for users to manage their financing. With the fully digital e-KYC process, users can do financial budgeting through the Pocket feature which can be personalized accordingly.

Aside from these features, the long awaited movement is a synergistic partnership between Bank Jago and Gojek. Public is currently looking forward to how both parties synergize with each other's ecosystem.

When Gojek was announced as a shareholder in December 2020, the service that would mark the first synergy between the two companies was account opening feature of Bank Jago on the Gojek application.

Today, DailySocial had the opportunity to interview Bank Jago's President Director, Kharim Indra Gupta Siregar and to exclusively find out the big picture of Bank Jago's synergy with Gojek and the ecosystem's partners in 2021.

Positive feedback

Without revealing any statistics, Kharim admitted that he had good traction and positive feedback of the Jago application launching. Some of the highlighted response was the fast onboarding process for account opening and the Pocket feature.

For Kharim, this positive response is seen as a challenge for Bank Jago to make quick adjustments, especially during the e-KYC process. In addition, he considers the Pocket feature to be one of the important milestones in creating something new such as money sharing transparency.

"Even our [debit] card can be connected to whatever Pocket, whenever is good for users. For me, it's very cool because users can know exactly how to use their money, including cash withdrawals or online shopping. We put a lot of effort for design and architecture in order to produce an excellent response time. We are continuously upgrading the technology as we speak,"

Currently, his teams are exploring the implementation of machine learning in the Jago application. The form that is being tested is, for example categorizing transactions to produce a recommendation (suggestion) to users.

Jago's great synergy

Among the number of plans throughout 2021, Kharim pretty much highlights the realization of the synergy between Bank Jago and Gojek. The big picture is to connect both Bank Jago and Gojek ecosystems. For starter, the two companies will first enter through the account opening service.

Technically, Kharim said, there will be a link that directly connects Gojek and Bank Jago to open an account. He said, opening an account on the Gojek application will have a similar process to Bank Jago. This is an important note as it relates to regulatory issues.

"The minute you do the download or registration, all the processes are recorded in the bank. You can seamlessly link Gojek, therefore, the Jago application can directly become a source of Gopay. I make sure that these features will be available this year," he said.

Apart from Gojek, Kharim also revealed a lot about Bank Jago's collaboration with the mutual fund marketplace Bibit which was announced today, Monday (5/7). In accordance with its vision by offering life centric financial services, it seeks to democratize investment services which have been identical only to the established class.

There are several advantages that users can enjoy through this collaboration. First, users can open a Jago account in the Bibit application. Users would not have to worry about which funds are the main source of mutual fund payments at Bibit. This means that users can use the Jago application as the main source of investment in Bibit.

Then, users can also set it as a recurring transaction where mutual fund purchases can be made directly from Jago's account. Automatically, Bibit Pocket will appear in the Jago application. This also applies if GoPay becomes a source of funding, then GoPay Pocket appears in Jago.

"We are definitely at the latest stage of development. We are ready for production. When? Very very soon. Therefore, I am confident enough to say that after we go live with Bibit, the next one will be with Gojek. Gojek is a huge ecosystem. Along the way, we will explore new things," he said.

Partnership opportunity with GoTo

Since the beginnig, Bank Jago has always emphasized its vision to connect financial and lifestyle solutions into one platform. Therefore, collaboration with the digital ecosystem is a key strategy to realize this.

With the increasingly fierce competition for digital banks today, he believes that the industry needs to realize that banking products are no longer a product of the future. What should be highlighted, he said, is where and what is the bank's position in the digital ecosystem, both financial and lifestyle.

Bank Jago's business model / Bank Jago

Kharim emphasized that Bank Jago is currently focusing on developing its strategic partnership this year. The company aims for synergies with large customer base partners, also to speed up the process of acquiring new users. In this case, he assesses that the mutual interest of both parties makes user acquisition costs more efficient because acquisitions occur through partners' services/products.

"Currently, Gojek and Jago's synergy is only one-way use case, where our functionality is only available in partner applications. The next step will be the other way around to put Gojek's functionality in the Jago application. It will be similar to Bibit. One of the future use cases is that users do not need to leave the Jago application when they want to use Bibit. Vice versa," Kharim said.

On the other hand, his team also positively welcomed the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia to become GoTo. He said, this action creates more opportunities to explore new collaborations/synergies. Kharim is yet to reveal a possible new use case with GoTo. However, he took this momentum as an opportunity to learn more as an organization.

"In early 2021, we all know that our main ecosystem that we are planning to work together is Gojek. We did not see GoTo in the picture. Now we should be ready for what's coming because you really have to react quickly to this, therefore, we can focus on our main strategy. We have to see what collaboration opportunities can be accessed with Gojek. I think this is an exciting journey," he said.

Collaboration challenges

In his collaboration journey with the ecosystem, Kharim also highlighted how a common vision and passion are crucial in building partnerships. With its position as a tech-based bank, it is also required to make decisions quickly but still refer to the existing regulatory framework.

He said, for example, the strategic partnership with Gojek and Bibit. It elaborates the concept of an embedded ecosystem where both parties must become seamless in the ecosystem. Kharim said, to build this seamless integration, it's not possible to do it transactionally. This means that there must be alignment at all levels of the organization.

"If you talk with a different language, it will be difficult. The process is different, the way of working is different, OKR is also different. It clearly has to start from the top, starting from ownership, leadership, vision, and execution. Implementation challenges is definite, but an aligned vision will make it much easier. It has to be learning by doing process, how to make decisions quickly. To date, our partners have a good alignment with us."

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian