T

wo large Internet companies, Yahoo! and Rakuten, have announced that they will enhance their digital products and services in Indonesia by early next year.

Yahoo!, in partnership with Vivendi Universal, will introduce a music channel to provide Indonesian users access to approximately 6,000 music videos by global artists, while Rakuten will start offering financial services to the market.

Billboard.com had previously reported that Yahoo! had reached a non-exclusive agreement with Vivendi Universal, parent of Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment to market Duet, a digital music subscription service.

Yahoo! vice president and head of international marketing, Robert Bridge, said that Yahoo! would roll out this music video channel '€” integrated in its entertainment site '€” in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, before the end of the year.

'€œVideo is part of our strategy moving forward,'€ he said.

Bridge added that Indonesia remained '€œattractive to all digital businesses'€ because of the growth the market had seen although the Japanese market had the highest digital advertising spending in the region, with the Asia-Pacific contributing roughly 20 percent to Yahoo!'€™s global business. Indonesia is already Yahoo!'€™s largest market in Southeast Asia in terms of volume and growth of user base, he said.

E-commerce site Rakuten has also announced significant uplifts for its business here.

Rakuten global CEO and chairman, Toru Shimada, said Rakuten Belanja Online '€” the domestic unit of Japanese e-commerce giant, Rakuten Inc. '€” had now entered the second phase of business, expanding into financial services to guarantee '€œhigh quality payment'€.

Rakuten Belanja Online CEO Ryota Inaba stated that the unit was holding talks with financial regulators regarding payment solutions.

In Japan, Rakuten provides around seven financial services from credit card payment, to online brokerage and life insurance. Rakuten'€™s Indonesian unit now offers Internet and mobile payment in collaboration with banks, like Bank Mandiri and BCA.

'€œMobile payment in Indonesia is growing, but online has gotten much better too, compared to two years ago, thanks to infrastructure improvement,'€ he said, adding that the online payment ratio now stood at 60 percent.