Jakarta, 18 September 2017 – Grab, the leading on-demand transportation and mobile payments platform in Southeast Asia, today announced Ongki Kurniawan has been named the Managing Director of GrabPay in Indonesia, Grab’s largest market in the region. This senior appointment will help GrabPay develop strong partnerships across the ecosystem, accelerate the integration of Kudo with Grab, and continue the expansion of its online marketplaces and small business partner network.

“We are excited to have Ongki grow GrabPay in Indonesia and accelerate financial inclusion for Indonesians. The unique nature and size of Indonesia requires world-class expertise and we’re convinced Ongki’s experience spanning Telco, Payments, Social Media, and Commerce will add invaluable depth and strong local leadership to our Indonesia team,” said Jason Thompson, Head of GrabPay. “Ongki’s deep understanding of the Indonesian market will help us transform GrabPay into Indonesia’s most relevant and widely used mobile payments platform,” he added.

Ongki will work with a team of 150 local engineers in Grab’s Jakarta R&D center as well as an expanding network of partners to build localized payment solutions that are best suited to Indonesia’s consumers and merchants and can make a difference in Indonesia’s young and fragmented payments market.

“I share the same passion as Grab in helping Indonesians benefit from the digital economy through innovations made here in Indonesia. GrabPay’s vision to bring everyone into the digital economy – from the emerging middle class to small businesses across the country – is one that will help make Indonesia Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy, and I look forward to being a part of that journey,” Ongki Kurniawan said.

Prior to joining Grab, Ongki was previously Managing Director for LINE, driving strategy and execution in Indonesia. He also served as Director/Chief Digital and Director/CTO for XL Axiata, Principal at BCG, and Credit Analyst with Citi Corporate Banking Group. He was also on the Board of Adknowledge Asia and Elevenia. Ongki obtained his Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and MBA in Finance and Accounting from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He has completed all Levels (1-3) of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program from The CFA Institute.

As part of the local leadership team, Ongki will report directly to Jason Thompson, Head of GrabPay. Grab Indonesia will continue to be led by country head Ridzki Kramadibrata.

Over the course of 2017, Grab has made a number of serious commitments to growing Indonesia’s middle economy.

• Earlier in 2017, Grab committed to investing USD700 million as part of the ‘Grab 4 Indonesia 2020’ master plan, supporting Indonesia’s goal of becoming Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy by 2020.
• The ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ fund will invest up to $100 million in companies focused on deepening financial inclusion across all cities and income levels in Indonesia. The fund will focus on the mobile and financial services industries with an emphasis on serving smaller cities and communities who have yet to benefit from the digital economy, helping entrepreneurs accelerate their products to market with both capital investment and technical assistance from Grab.
• In May, Grab opened an R&D centre in Jakarta to nurture and support the growth of tech talent. Under the master plan, Grab announced that it aims to create five million micro-entrepreneurs in Indonesia by 2018, and to increase the number of its local engineering talents by the hundreds by end of year.
• Kudo, the leading O2O (online to offline) platform in Indonesia and a Grab acquisition from May 2017, continues to be an important element in Grab’s strategy to bring more people into the digital economy by providing them access to online payments via offline agents, driving deeper financial inclusion for Indonesians.

Beyond Indonesia, Grab recently made a series of important announcements in support of the development of the GrabPay wallet as it plans to extend GrabPay beyond transport across Southeast Asia.

• Grab introduced a revamped GrabRewards program earlier in August, which expanded to include more than 150 merchants in its ecosystem of rewards, as well as a new loyalty tier system designed to better reward top spenders.
• In Singapore, Grab also introduced a new peer-to-peer fund transfer feature that users can use to transfer GrabPay credits using either a phone number or by scanning a quick response (QR) code unique to each user.
• Grab also plans to extend the use of GrabPay to more than 1,000 merchants, such as those in the food and beverage (F&B), and retail and entertainment industries, in the fourth quarter of 2017.