Introducing BaaS, a Modern Way to Enter the Digital World

Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) becomes a hot topic on how banks try to innovate into the digital world. Earlier this year, Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart), through Nexus, pioneered this method through partnerships with Bukalapak and Sociolla. Nexus was developed by SC Ventures, a Stanchart investment company.

BaaS term is different from open banking or digital bank (neobank) which has commonly known. DailySocial interviewed some industry players regarding their respective differentiation.

Before BaaS, Indonesia had already been familiar with the concept of a financial product marketplace such as those implemented by CekAja and Cermati in its debut. The concept is similar to when accessing e-commerce pages, consumers can access various financial products from marketplace partners and make transactions.

"BaaS, open banking, and financial product marketplaces are different things, where BaaS can give providers the ability to build systems that will be owned by the provider itself, based on the infrastructure and expertise of the bank," CekAja's Director of Legal, Compliance, Governmental Relations and Human Capital, Marthina Natalyna said.

Meanwhile, Finantier's Co-Founder and CEO, Diego Rojas said that BaaS is different from other API concepts because it provides a licensed and regulated infrastructure for core banking services. Out of the box, almost all companies can now become fintech companies without going through the long process, thanks to the existence of open finance companies such as Finantier.

Finantier is a startup that provides an open finance ecosystem to support collaboration between various types of companies in providing financial products specifically designed for their consumers.