Visa joins Series F for Indonesia’s Go-Jek
Visa has confirmed its participation in an ongoing Series F round for Indonesia-based ride-hailing and online services platform Go-Jek that had raised about $1 billion as of February.
It comes about a week after Mitsubishi Corporation said it had re-upped in the round and amid a fierce battle for market share and strategic support with Grab, the company’s regional rival. Grab’s ongoing Series H had raised about $6.5 billion as of last month.
Visa will help Go-Jek provide greater options for cashless payments and more seamless experiences for consumers across Indonesia and Southeast Asia, according to a statement. This plan will leverage the start-up’s existing payments service Go-Pay, which is touted as Indonesia’s market leader in digital payments and financial inclusion. Digital-first and unbanked consumers will be the primary target demographic.
“We both [Visa and Go-Jek] want to make everyday life more convenient, whether it's how people move around town in Southeast Asia's fast-growing urban areas, or making it easier for people to pay and be paid all over the world,” said Chris Clark, Visa’s regional president for Asia Pacific. “We also have a shared goal to bring formal financial services to the unbanked and underserved, including micro, small and medium businesses.”
Founded in 2010 as a motorcycle taxi service, Go-Jek has expanded into a number of divisions, encompassing areas such as ride-hailing, parcel delivery, online-to-offline services, and payments. It claims to be Southeast Asia’s largest mobile-on-demand and digital payments platform, operating in more than 200 cities across five countries. The payments vertical processed transactions worth $6.3 billion in 2018.
In addition to Visa and Mitsubishi, Go-Jek has attracted strategic backing from the likes of Google, Tencent, JD.com, all of which participated in the first phase of the Series F, as well as Allianz Group, Meituan-Dianping, Rakuten, Samsung, and Astra International. Other investors include KKR, Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, Northstar Group, BlackRock, Shunwei Capital, Provident Capital Partners, Farallon Capital, and GIC Private.
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