Ant Financial Expands to Indonesia

Ant Financial is continuing its global expansion with a joint venture to develop local financial services in Indonesia. The company has partnered with conglomerate Emtek, Indonesia’s second largest media firm and an investor in -major e-commerce player Bukalapak, to enter Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy and home to a population of 250 million people.

The new venture will initially take the form of a payments platform within BlackBerry’s messaging service, which has about 63 million users in Indonesia, the two companies said in a joint statement. Beyond serving BBM users, the deal will also offer its mobile payments technology to e-commerce, over-the-top and online-to-offline services, merchants and platforms in Indonesia, taking advantage of Emtek’s position as the country’s top media conglomerate.

The Emtek tie-up is Ant’s fifth international payments deal since November, seeking to tap Asia’s third-largest country by population as the company continues to extend its mobile finance empire outside China. Ant has set itself the goal of serving two billion customers within the next ten years.