BRI Agro Inks Deal With Payfazz to Expand Its Digital Banking Offerings
by Fintech News Indonesia May 31, 2021PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia Agroniaga (BRI Agro) has inked a deal with local agent-based fintech company Payfazz.
Using the API (application programming interface) of its signature digital lending app Pinang, BRI Agro’s digital savings and lending solutions will be channeled to 250,000-plus Payfazz agents as end-users.
In turn, agents will also be able to relay the same offerings to their collective 10 million monthly active customers across rural Indonesia.
The deal will instantly see BRI Agro’s digital savings accounts become more ubiquitous to underserved Indonesians in rural areas.
Payfazz agents will be able to offer Pinang’s low-interest rates to customers instantaneously, without needing to communicate with BRI Agro.
The partnership will accelerate BRI Agro’s plan to go beyond agriculture-focused lending and become a digital bank.
BRI Agro’s CEO Kaspar Situmorang said Payfazz’s rural-first approach aligns with BRI Agro’s focus on bringing financial inclusion to the country’s hard-to-reach and informal economies, which account for Indonesia’s massive underbanked (47 million) and unbanked (92 million) populations.
The tie-up with Payfazz is one of BRI Agro’s several partnerships with fintech brands, a key strategy to widening the digital bank’s footprint via third parties. In 2020, BRI Agro’s fintech partnerships resulted in IDR215 billion (~US$14.8 million) worth of loans disbursed across third-party apps.
Kaspar Situmorang
“Gig and service economies gained a stronger foothold in rural Indonesia due to accelerated digital adoption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but many of these microentrepreneurs still lack access to basic banking services that can help them grow their businesses, mitigate risks, and build healthy credit profiles.
With Payfazz acting as yet another channel for our digital savings and micro-lending solutions, BRI Agro takes a giant step closer to becoming the financial home for Indonesia’s gig economy. We are especially excited to bring Pinang — with its flat 1.24% interest rate and two-minute loan approval process — to over 10 million non-urban Indonesians via Payfazz.”
Hendra Kwik
Hendra Kwik, Payfazz’s CEO and Co-Founder said,
“Here at Payfazz, we see banks and other fintech outfits not as competitors, but as potential partners. We concentrate the vast majority of our resources in rural areas. This includes vetting and onboarding agents and understanding the nuances of different provinces.”
“With this in mind, we can help BRI Agro channel its competitive savings and lending solutions to rural Indonesians quickly and securely. Down the road, we hope to expand this partnership to BRI Agro’s more complex products such as insurance and investments, then eventually toward formalizing these so-called informal economies.”
