Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has emerged over the past couple of years as one of the region’s biggest fintech hubs.

Home to 785 fintech companies, as of late 2021, Indonesia is currently Southeast Asia’s second largest fintech startup community. These companies secured 26% of all fintech funding amount across Southeast Asia, second only to Singapore (44%), showcasing the scale and weight it has on the region’s fintech ecosystem.

Indonesia’s booming fintech sector has been driven by a number of factors, including the rise of digital merchants, accelerating consumers adoption of fintech solutions, and bullishness in the investor community in the prospects of digital financial services domestically.

To get a sense of Indonesia’s up-and-coming fintech leaders, we’ve compiled today a list of the top ten most well-funded fintech companies in the country. For this list, we’ve used data from Tech in Asia, CB Insights and Dealroom, and selected only those that have raised at least US$100 million in venture capital (VC) funding.

We’ve excluded publicly traded and state-owned companies such as the GoTo Group and mobile wallet LinkAja, as well as their subsidiaries. We’ve also excluded companies headquartered in another country but which operate in Indonesia, such as FinAccel, the operator of Kredivo, as well as those that have already been acquired by another company like Bibit.

Xendit – US$538 million

Founded in 2014, Xendit is a fintech company that provides payment solutions and simplifies the payment process for businesses of all sizes in Indonesia, the Philippines and across Southeast Asia.

Xendit enables businesses to accept payments in various methods including direct debit, virtual accounts, credit and debit cards, e-wallets, retail outlets, and online installments, disburse payroll, run marketplaces and more, on an easy integration platform supported by 24/7 customer service.

The company claims more than 3,000 customers, among which Samsung Indonesia, Grab Pay, Ninja Van Philippines, Qoala, Unicef Indonesia, Cashalo and Shopback, and says it has tripled annualized transactions from 65 million to 200 million and increased total payments value from US$6.5 billion to US$15 billion over the past year.

Xendit closed a US$300 million Series D funding round in May 2022, bringing its total VC funding raised to US$538 million. Xendit is one of Indonesia’s fintech unicorn, valued at US$1 billion, according to CB Insights.

Akulaku – US$320 million

Founded in 2016, Akulaku is a banking and digital finance platform in Southeast Asia, with a presence in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The company aims to meet the daily financial needs of underserved customers in emerging markets through digital banking, digital financing, digital investment, and insurance brokerage services.

Akulaku’s core products are an e-commerce platform that allows users to shop by using installments and a virtual credit card. The company also operates Asetku, an online wealth management platform, and the Neobank app, a mobile digital banking offering supported by Bank Neo Commerce.

The company claims 26 million users and 4.8 monthly active users in 2021. Last year, total revenue grew by 122% to US$598 million and total gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased by 136% to US$5.8 billion, the company says.

Akulaku has raised about US$320 million in VC funding, according to Dealroom, and is the most valuable fintech startup in Indonesia at US$2 billion, according to CB Insights. It closed US$100 million in funding in February to “further expand the geographic reach” of its offerings across Southeast Asia.

Akulaku is reportedly contemplating a US listing via a merger with a blank-check company.

Dana – US$250 million

Founded in 2017, Dana is a digital wallet that provides payment infrastructure and financial services in Indonesia. The platform allows users to transact with ease, send money, pay bills, make e-commerce purchases, and more.

For merchants, the technology provides wide developer integration options and easy onboarding, supporting the national QR Indonesia Standard (QRIS) network as well as the national open API payments standards (BI-SNAP).

Since launching its application in December 2018, the company claims it has reached over 115 million users in Indonesia, and now processes an average of over 10 million transactions a day. According to data.ai, Dana was the most-downloaded finance application in Indonesia in 2021.

Dana claims it is on track to more than double its total payment volume or gross transaction value in 2022 compared to 2021.

Dana has raised US$250 million in disclosed funding, and is valued at US$1.13 billion, according to CB Insights.

Ajaib – US$243 million

Founded in 2018, Ajaib is an online wealth management solution that allows users to buy and sell stocks, exchange traded funds (ETFs), and mutual funds. The platform targets first-time Millennial investors in Indonesia, with the goal of increasing financial inclusion.

Ajaib does not offer commission-free trading, but does apply lower fees compared to its competitors. The company also claims to be the first online stockbroker in Indonesia to have scrapped minimum capital requirements.

Ajaib says it is the third-largest brokerage by the number of transactions in Indonesia, with over 1 million investors based on its platform. In comparison, Indonesia has more than 5 million individual investors in the capital market, according to data from Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK).

The startup joined the unicorn club after a US$153 million fundraise in October 2021 which brought its total funding to about US$243 million. It’s backed by investors such as  DST Global, Ribbit Capital, ICONIQ Capital and IVP, and is valued at US$1 billion, according to CB Insights.

Pintu – US$154 million

Launched in April 2020, Pintu is a beginner-friendly digital asset trading and investing app that allows users to buy and sell more than 50 cryptocurrencies. The platform is specifically designed for first-time and novice users, and features an easy-to-user interface, educational content, as well as advanced security features.

Since its launch, the company claims more than four million people have installed its app, making it Indonesia’s most downloaded crypto-focused trading app, according to Data.ai figures. According to the Indonesian Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, Indonesia is home to about 12 million crypto investors.

Pintu has raised US$154 million in funding, its latest round being a US$113 million Series B closed in June. Pintu said at the time it planned to use the capital to build out new features, including additional supported tokens and blockchains and products. The exchange doubled the size of its team to 200 last year and is looking to continue with its aggressive hiring plans to help address the booming crypto market in Indonesia.

Lummo – US$151 million

Launched in December 2019 as BukuKas, Lummo started out as a bookkeeping app for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) before expanding its business in late 2020 to a broader range of services aimed at helping business owners sell online and manage their financial flows more effectively.

Lummo currently has two apps under its umbrella: LummoShop ,which was previously called Tokko, an e-commerce enabler and direct-to-consumer (D2C) commerce builder, and BukuKas, its bookkeeping app.

Lummo claims it saw its GMV grow elevenfold from December 2020 to December 2021. Krishnan Menon, founder and CEO of Lummo, told Bloomberg earlier this year that close to seven million small businesses have registered to use its platform since the end of 2019.

Lummo closed a US$80 million Series C funding round in January 2022, bringing its total funding to more than US$150 million. The company’s valuation is estimated at US$500 million.

Fazz – US$149 million

Fazz is a digital financial services group founded in 2016 as a result of a merger between Indonesia-founded PayFazz and Singapore-founded Xfers. The company provides an all-in-one finance platform for businesses in Indonesia and Singapore, featuring a business cash account, payment acceptance capabilities, transfers and payments, lending, financial management, and more.

Fazz provides two main products: Fazz Agen, an agent-based financial application serving MSMEs in Indonesia, that provides easy access to payment, wholesale purchase, and equitable capital; and Fazz Business, a business account that helps growing startups, MSMEs, and large corporations, to build, run, and grow their businesses across Southeast Asia by providing the ability to pay and receive payments, grow capital, and get funding.

In addition to Fazz Agen and Fazz Business, Fazz also consists of Modal Rakyat, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and borrowing service for MSMEs, and StraitsX, a payments infrastructure for digital assets.

Fazz has raised US$149 million in VC funding, according to Dealroom. It closed a US$100 million Series C round in September 2022 consisting of US$75 million in equity and US$25 million in debt facility, which it said it would use to build up its business account product and expand its team.

Flip – US$120 million

Founded in 2015, Flip is an award-winning payment platform serving Indonesian consumers and merchants. The company provides services such as domestic transfers, overseas transfers, and financial management for businesses, focusing on offering “fair, low-cost financial transactions from anywhere to anyone.”

The company’s most prominent products include online P2P payments with interbank transfers to more than 100 domestic banks, e-wallet top-ups, and business solution products. It also enables users to send money from Indonesia to more than 45 countries and provides enterprise payment transfer services.

Flip claims to have served more than 10 million Indonesians and “hundreds of companies of all sizes” providing them with disbursement and remittance services such as employee payroll, customer refunds, invoice/supplier payments, and international transfers. It says it processes more than US$12 billion in transactions annually.

Flip has raised US$120 million in VC funding so far, its latest round being US$103 million Series B closed in June 2022. It said at the time it would use the proceeds to ramp up its workforce, invest in new products and technology development and fuel its business expansion.

Pluang – US$113 million

Founded in 2019, Pluang is an investment and micro-savings app that allows users to invest across several asset classes, including stocks, cryptocurrencies, gold and mutual funds. The platform’s deep integrations with regional super apps Gojek, Dana, Tokopedia, and Bukalapak provide a unique competitive advantage, and has helped it amass more than four million registered users in Indonesia in the span of three years.

The company says it has witnessed strong growth these past couple of months, with monthly transacting users soaring 22-fold between January 2020 and November 2021 and growth in users with an active balance increasing 28.5 times.

Pluang closed a US$55 million in a Series B funding round in January 2022, bringing its total funding to US$113 million, according to data from CB Insights and Dealroom.

Pluang said at the time that it planned to use the additional funding to further build out its technology capabilities and expand its asset classes. The company also plans to expand the availability of its app and services throughout key additional international markets.

Julo – US$105 million

Founded in 2016, Julo is a licensed P2P lending company that connects institutional lenders with the underbanked and unbanked population through its mobile app. The startup utilizes a digital data-driven credit underwriting and risk assessment platform it developed to process consumer credit applications and determine applicants’ creditworthiness.

Julo says the total number of funds it disbursed in 2021 grew by more than threefold as compared to the year prior and the company aims to increase its loan book by over five times in the next 12 months. Julo claims it has served more than 350,000 customers and says its app has been downloaded by over five million users.

Last year, it launched a consumer digital credit offering, allowing users to utilize up to US$1,000 for various transactions, including fund withdrawals, fund transfers, phone credit top ups, utilities bill payments, e-wallet top-ups, e-commerce purchases and QRIS payments.

Julo has raised US$105 million in VC funding, according to Dealroom, its latest round being a US$30 million round closed in April.

 

Featured image credit: Edited from Unsplash