Credit: 215266548 © Thapana Onpalai | Dreamstime
Indonesia has experienced an explosion of demand for digital services in recent years. With mobile penetration reaching 72 per cent and Internet reach also growing to 72 per cent, the nation is well-set to embrace the opportunity presented by digital.
Indeed, Indonesia has been recognised as one of the “most digitally-connected societies in Southeast Asia,” and this is opening the doors for innovation and disruption.
Such investments are also expected to assist in driving equality across the nation. For example, there were 21 million new digital consumers added across Indonesia throughout the pandemic. This included, for the first time in many cases, populations within non-metropolitan areas. Given that one in three Indonesians are considered “unbanked,” and this disproportionately affects those outside of the cities, digital presents the greatest opportunity to better integrate the entire society.
However, to bring Indonesians into digital finance and other areas of digital transformation, organisations need to work to build trust. This was the subject of the discussion in a recent exclusive interview between TOTM Technologies, Incode, and Foundry.
TOTM Technologies already provides the underlying systems that powers the Indonesian government’s National ID, the company CEO, Pierre Prunier, said. However, the company recently inked a partnership with Incode to distribute the Incode Omni end-to-end digital identity platform to the market. This would further deepen the capabilities of the system and enhance trust in it across the population, Prunier said.
“We studied a lot of various solutions in the market as well, because we have to be mindful that creating a platform and a solution that's secure and trusted by customers is obviously a very difficult challenge – it’s one we supported, but would also take time and resources,” Prunier said. “Having come to a partnership with Incode, it made a lot of sense for us to help them deploy their solution into Indonesia, because it complements the work that we've already done here.”
The security of ID is more important than ever
Across Asia-Pacific, a spate of data and ID theft incidents has sharpened the public’s concern over security this year.
In Indonesia, in September, records of 105 million Indonesian citizens – around 40 per cent of the population - was stolen and sold on a breach forum. Other high-profile breaches across the nation in 2022 alone has included The Bank of Indonesia, the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, and numerous hospitals and the police service.
So, organisations within Indonesia need to earn customer trust back by delivering robust and uncompromising security. At the same time, Incode Senior Director of Marketing in APAC and EMEA, Jonathan Anderson, said that earning the community’s trust also means ensuring that the experience of the digital interaction is excellent.
“I can have very strong security, but very slow performance, and I lose the customer,” he said. “We have to make it very efficient and frictionless for the user. With our Incode Omni platform organisations can align their identity strategy with their business strategy, and they can personalise services through their business.
“Now, imagine the types of customers you have across different segments, but also different countries and different locations. The question becomes how do you customise identity at scale? We figured out how to do that, which is very unique.
“We’re basically offering a new generation of identity verification, powered by complete automation, no humans in the loop, and that makes it more accurate, more secure, and more scalable.”
As the World Bank itself notes in its report “Beyond Unicorns: Harnessing Digital Technologies for Inclusion in Indonesia,” the drive towards secure digital identities is what will underpin the nation’s rapid recovery from pandemic disruption and its emergence as a digital force in South-East Asia. “Developing a digital identification framework to equip Indonesians with the ability to securely prove their identity when transacting online would boost trust in the digital economy, reduce fraud, and enable more public and private sector services to be delivered end-to-end remotely,” the report notes.
“This would allow any Indonesian with internet, no matter how far away from the nearest government office or bank branch, to access such services.”
This is what TOTM Technologies, in collaboration with Incode, is providing to the Indonesian population. However, it is by no means a solution that is of exclusive relevance to Indonesia. Across the Asia-Pacific region, all nations and businesses would benefit from looking at what is happening in Indonesia as an opportunity for their own people and customers as well.
Learn more about the Incode Omni platform here.
