Mastercard Strive Indonesia is an initiative by Mastercard and several parties to hold a series of financial inclusion and digital finance workshops for MSMEs.
Heaptalk, Jakarta — Mastercard in collaboration with the National Financial Inclusive Council (DNKI) and Mercy Corps Indonesia launched an initiative namely the Mastercard Strive Indonesia program in Jakarta (04/04). This program is planned to last for three years and targets to reach 300,000 small businesses in Indonesia by 2025.
Inaugurating the initiative, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto appreciated Mastercard’s cooperation and support for the implementation of the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (SNKI) through a series of financial inclusion and digital finance workshops for more than 300,000 MSME beneficiaries.
According to Airlangga, this program is important in maintaining the momentum of national economic growth which reached 5.3% in 2022 amidst a period of ups and downs in global economic conditions. This high economic growth was also accompanied by improvements in the quality of social welfare as reflected in declining poverty and unemployment rates. Apart from that, post-pandemic economic movements are also getting better.
“Surely this momentum must be maintained. Primarily on access to inclusive financial services,” said Airlangga Hartarto who is also the Daily Chair of the National Financial Inclusive Council (DNKI) at the launch of the Mastercard Strive Indonesia Program (04/04).
In 2022, financial inclusion in Indonesia will increase from 83.6% in 2021 to 85.1%, higher than the targeted figure of 85%. Meanwhile, the financial inclusion target for 2023 and 2024 is set at 88% and 90% respectively.
In an effort to achieve this target, the Government is still faced with several challenges, including the socio-economic groups that have not been served substantially by formal financial services or are referred to as underserved and financially excluded groups, including MSMEs. Data shows that around 1 in 10 MSMEs do not have an account and have never used formal financial services.
Airlangga added, “Therefore, the digital financial system is important and certainly all kinds of obstacles are expected to be resolved. This digital economic system will improve if MSME products can be part of it. And it is also estimated that currently there are only around 20 million onboarding MSMEs out of the 64 million existing MSMEs. We hope that from these 64 million MSMEs the form of onboarding can be further improved.”
The existence of around 64 million MSMEs in Indonesia currently contributes to 61% of the GDP and is able to absorb as much as 97% of the total national employment. Further, around 13.7 million (21%) MSMEs are already connected in the digital financial ecosystem with a transaction value of up to Rp405 trillion in 2022.
“I hope this program can improve unbanked MSMEs to become bankable and surely Mastercard can organize a lot of training,” concluded Airlangga.
