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Executive Column: Ilham Habibie says open finance era is now
Ayoconnect’s newest commissioner, Ilham Habibie, says Indonesia is entering an era of open finance in which fintech services connect with one another.
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Ayoconnect commissioner Ilham Habibie (Courtesy of Ayoconnect/-)
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ndonesia’s financial technology ecosystem has been growing rapidly over the past two years as the COVID-19 pandemic pushes consumers and merchants to use digital financial services like e-wallets, investment apps and online lending platforms.
Growing demand for various financial services means fintech companies need to expand their product offerings, linking one service to another -- a practice made possible by open finance.
The Jakarta Post’s Eisya A. Eloksari spoke on Nov. 12 with Ilham Habibie, the newly appointed commissioner at Ayoconnect, a financial application programming interface (API) platform, to talk about open finance and collaboration in the financial services industry.
Question: What fintech trends do you see in the past and going forward?
Answer: Fintech has come a long way in Indonesia. At the beginning, there was only e-money, e-wallets, digital payments and payment gateways. Then, we started to see online lending and crowdfunding platforms for donations. Wealth management, such as investment apps, are becoming mainstream as well.
I think we are in the open finance stage right now, where all of these platforms are connected to each other, and the philosophy of open finance is to increase financial inclusion. This is good news for us at Ayoconnect, because every service, be it fintech or another, needs an API.
An API infrastructure is fundamental in the digital world, as it enables interfaces between many parties, and that is crucial for collaboration, such as in open finance and open government.
