Their role models Alibaba and WeChat, the Chinese e-commerce and messaging platforms, have become the two most powerful companies in China thanks to their transformation strategy into service platforms revolving around their respective<\/span> payment systems AliPay and WeChat Pay<\/b>. WeChat now sees $500 billion in transactions annually.<\/span><\/p>\n In Indonesia, the fourth largest market in the world, <\/span>Go-Jek, an Uber for scooters, launched its GoPay mobile wallet in April 2016<\/b>. Go-Jek drivers receive a bonus if their customers accept <\/span>to store their change in GoPay<\/b>. This stored value \u00a0allows them to benefit from a discount on their next trip. GoPay is trying to make their form of payment a habit for customers, , introducing new features to encourage use , including the possibility last March to transfer GoPay credit to one another without paying any transfer fees. <\/span>GoPay has become the 4th most used mobile wallet in the country in less than a year of existence.<\/b> Its competitor Grab has raised $1.5 billion this month to strengthen its nascent payment platform, GrabPay, launched in July 2016, and also acquired Indonesian payment startup \u00a0Kudo in April 2017 to integrate into its platform.<\/span><\/p>\n In India, the situation is similar. The leading Indian transport app, Ola, competitor of Uber, launched its mobile wallet Ola Money in 2015. <\/span>Originally built to pay Ola drivers, it is now used for shopping, buying airline tickets and recently paying for hotel rooms<\/b> following a partnership with India’s leading hotel room provider Oyo Rooms. Elsewhere in the market, \u00a0Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart acquired the existing mobile wallet PhonePe in April 2016 and launched a <\/span>\u00ab\u00a0Buy Now, Pay Later\u00a0\u00bb feature<\/b> in June, thus entering into competition with credit cards<\/b> whilst engaging in a bold attempt to differentiate itself from its competitor Amazon. Hike Messenger, WhatsApp\u2019s Indian competitor, launched <\/span>Hike Wallet <\/b>in June in partnership with one of the country’s leading banks Yes Bank! The app essentially allows you to<\/span> make transfers between friends<\/b>, and \u00a0is in the process of partnering with merchants to tackle online and offline payments, like WeChat Pay.<\/span><\/p>\n Southeast Asian leaders also have invested in payment. <\/span>Garena, the Singaporean unicorn and gaming leader, has its own \u00a0AirPay payments wallet, which today exceeds $510 million in annual transactions.<\/b> HelloPay, the mobile wallet linked to the Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada, has just been integrated with AliPay. LINE Pay, the mobile wallet for the Korean messaging application LINE is the leading messaging app in Thailand, and was integrated with local payments player Rabbit to form Rabbit LINE Pay which is now used to pay bills, buy airline tickets and \u00a0transfer money to friends.<\/span><\/p>\n We should see a<\/span> fierce war between the numerous wallets in the coming months<\/b>, leading to a consolidation of the market.<\/span><\/p>\n This content has been published first in IEV Premium Fintech<\/a> (July-August 2017), our magazine\u00a0for digital transformation in the financial industry across Asia & Africa for business leaders.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAsian tech startups\u00a0transition\u00a0to Fintech<\/h2>\n
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