E-Wallet Application Penetration for Financial Inclusion in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia is an archipelago country with more than 270 million inhabitants spread across urban and rural regions. This makes digital payment penetration a challenge in itself. Private and government e-wallet service providers have sought to increase the use of cashless services to address structural deficiencies in the country’s economy, such as poor financial inclusion and heavy reliance on manual remittances. This study discusses penetration problems that occur in the e-wallet industry and formulates the strategy so that the use of digital payment platforms can be carried out evenly in all regions of Indonesia. This study notes that technology enablement such as smartphone and internet penetration does not correlate with e-wallet penetration. Many underlying factors affect the penetration, such as key driving forces, infrastructure readiness, and people’s perception of the safety and security of mobile transactions. Bank Indonesia and e-wallet providers are responsible to educate people about the advantages along with possible risks of adopting e-wallet as a non-cash payment method.