Uber, the growing global giant of ride hailing apps, has faced a number of legal roadblocks in Indonesia, including having its drivers arrested multiple times in Jakarta and being “banned” from Bandung by its mayor. Despite those threats, Uber has continued to operate throughout Indonesia with few reports of service disruptions amongst its loyal users.
Uber obviously wants to continue expanding in Indonesia beyond that current user base, but until now it has faced one major obstacle (besides the legal ones): the lack of credit card holders in Indonesia. According to the Indonesian Credit Card Association, there are only 8 million credit card users in Indonesia, out of a population of about 250 million.
Previously, Uber users were required to register a credit card with their accounts so that all payments could be done automatically. But Uber announced in a press release sent out today that it has decided to allow Indonesian users to pay with cold hard cash as well.
In the statement, Mike Brown, Uber’s regional general manager for Southeast Asia and Oceania said, “We know that cash is still the dominant payment option for millions of Indonesians, especially in smaller cities. This experiment is really exciting for us given the success we’ve seen in other markets and the potential of the Indonesian market.”
Indonesia is not the first country where Uber is experimenting with cash payments. It has implemented them in all of the city’s where it operates in India and it introduced cash payments in the capital of the Philippines, Manila, earlier this week.
It will be interesting to see if this move allows Uber to gain greater traction in Indonesia, especially against local transport rivals like GrabTaxi and Go-Jek which already take cash payments. Would you be more likely to use Uber now that you can pay in cash?
