Credit where it’s due
Gege Lin’s finances have been a headache for years. A 30-year-old tutor working at an education startup in Jakarta, she takes motorcycle taxis all over the sprawling city to meet with her students. Sometimes, she’d open her ride-hailing app to find she didn’t have enough cash to pay for the trip and would have to ask her students’ parents to cover her. Lin had tried to get a credit card, but the banks wouldn’t consider an application from a freelancer.
That’s when Lin turned to PayLater, a service offered by ride-hailing company and aspiring super app Gojek. As its name suggests, PayLater allows users to pay in increments without having to jump through hoops at a bank, and the sign-up process is a lot less complicated. “All I had to do was take a selfie and send pictures of my identity card,” said Lin. “Then I could use it right away.”
Now, Lin doesn’t use PayLater to cover just her transport bills but also to buy daily essentials, like mobile phone credit, and cover recurring bills, such as the insurance fees for her father’s hospital visits. She says the service helps her manage her monthly expenses and make ends meet when she’s between paychecks.
