Indonesia's Go-Jek acquires three companies to boost payment services

Reuters
FILE PHOTO - A driver and passenger ride on a motorbike, part of the Go-Jek ride-hailing service, on a busy street in central Jakarta, Indonesia December 18, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/File Photo

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Go-Jek has acquired three financial technology businesses, as it expands from ride-hailing and other mobile on-demand offerings into payments and other services.

Go-Jek has bought offline payments processing company Kartuku, online payment gateway Midtrans, and saving and lending network Mapan, the company said in a statement on Friday. The acquisitions will take its combined debit card, credit card and digital wallet transactions to close to $5 billion, it said.

The value of the acquisitions was not disclosed.

The acquisitions "will accelerate financial inclusion for millions of Indonesians and stimulate economic productivity throughout the country," Go-Jek founder and chief executive officer Nadiem Makarim said.

Go-Jek, backed by private equity firms KKR & Co LP and Warburg Pincus LLC [WP.UL], competes with Uber Technologies [UBER.UL] and Singapore-based Grab to lure customers in the Southeast Asian market, home to 600 million people.

According to the statement, Go-Jek currently has 15 million weekly active users and processes 100 million transactions per month.

(Reporting by Ed Davies; Writing by Fergus Jensen; Editing by Stephen Coates)