Paypal Looks for Country Manager in Indonesia

U.S-based payment titan Paypal is reported to have interviewed a number of candidates to be appointed as Country Manager for Indonesia. We, DailySocial, are among the first to find out that Paypal has now closed the vacancy it posted on its website, and is currently recruiting the Country Manager as well as other strategic positions.

As one of its first steps of entering Indonesian market, Paypal has previously partnered with Doku and iPaymu. Finding out that the prospect is too tempting to be ignored, the giant finally decided to fully involve itself in the market, even though the actual motivation behind this decision remains a mistery.

At a glance, this step taken by Paypal seems promising, but it might also backfire the company as well. Keep in mind that Paypal is based on credit cards, something that Indonesia lacks of. As a matter of fact, the penetration of credit cards in the country only reaches 14% of its total population. A data by the Association of Indonesian Credit Cards even shows that there are ‘only’ 16 million credit cards published in Indonesia so far.

In India, where the credit cards penetration is as low as in Indonesia (1.7%), not to mention tons of regulatory limitation it faces, Paypal is forced to delay a number of projects. That being said, what is actually Paypal’s motivation to dive deeper into Indonesian market?