Bukalapak was founded in 2010 as an online marketplace to facilitate commerce for small- and medium-size businesses in Indonesia. The e-commerce platform has grown exponentially since, becoming the first and largest tech unicorn on the Indonesian Stock Exchange when it listed in August 2021.
"Bukalapak's tagline is Jual-beli online mudah dan terpercaya, which means buying and selling online is now easy and reliable, and that has been our guiding principle from Day One," shared Nita Puspita, Product Manager, Bukalapak. "It's important that buyers and sellers can trust Bukalapak's online and offline platforms so they can realise their own potential in Indonesia's tech-enabled economy," she added.
As part of the product team, besides looking into product innovation and expanding Bukalapak's service and product offerings, Nita's scope included ensuring secure onboarding experiences for users of Bukalapak's platform and services. However, with Bukalapak's wide range of service offerings, such as the Bukalapak marketplace, BukaTabungan, BukaSend, BMoney and Mitra Bukalapak, catering to a multitude of users' verification requirements all while safeguarding the business was no easy feat.
"Before integrating with ADVANCE.AI, there was a lot of manual work – from checking of the KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk, Indonesia's identity card) to reviewing potential fraud cases – every user had to be manually verified and because of that, it was a long and tedious process that can take hours or days. So we wanted to move towards an automated eKYC process by ADVANCE AI, thus beginning our partnership in June 2021 as part of our business growth plans and we have since achieved a 75% automated verification process," said Nita.
An automated eKYC process not only eliminates manual labour, but also helps to reduce human error as well as friction and overall onboarding time; all of which contribute to better business efficiencies from operations and processes to resources costs.
Bukalapak's partnership with ADVANCE.AI began in June 2021
For Bukalapak's users, ADVANCE.AI's eKYC process has also made onboarding a lot easier as our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology can accurately verify KTPs even under less-than-ideal conditions such as low light and low camera resolution. Bukalapak also utilises ADVANCE.AI's Face Comparison and Anti-Spoofing to further verify users and keep the business safe from fraud, high-risk individuals and activities. The verification checks are instantaneous to ensure the customer experience is not compromised.
With ADVANCE.AI's solution integrated across Bukalapak's offerings from its marketplace platform, BukaTabungan, BukaSend to BMoney and Mitra Bukalapak, the brand can now offer easy and secure onboarding for its users.
"The ADVANCE.AI team is focused on helping us achieve our business goals, and in ensuring safer and better onboarding experiences. In particular, we entrusted ADVANCE.AI to help us onboard merchants for Mitra Bukalapak – Bukalapak's solution to help Indonesian street stalls, or warung, digitise – and ADVANCE.AI has demonstrated that it knows the unique Indonesian market and understands the needs of consumers and merchants here," Nita emphasised.
"The ADVANCE.AI team is focused on helping us achieve our business goals, and in ensuring safer and better onboarding experiences."
Nita Puspita, Product Manager, Bukalapak
According to leading data and analytics company GlobalData, the Indonesia e-commerce market is expected to grow by 23.8% in 2022 and will reach IDR 753.8 trillion ($53.8 billion) in 2025. Indonesia's e-commerce continues to sustain growth over the last few years thanks to factors including a growing middle class, rising internet usage and smartphone penetration, further boosted by the surge of online merchants and payment tools. Yet, businesses have only started tapping the potential of a larger opportunity: the unbanked and underbanked.
Ronald FR Molenaar, Country Manager of ADVANCE.AI Indonesia, shared, "Indonesia is going through digitisation, but a large part of the population, including traditional warung and small family businesses which form a substantial part of Indonesia's economy, are still being excluded. Making commerce accessible to these businesses and their customers is key to financial inclusion, and it's one of the reasons why we are working closely with Bukalapak to ensure that we are minimising friction in the onboarding process because the easier it is to use digital platforms, the more people will keep coming back."
"Bukalapak is very happy with ADVANCE.AI. Besides easy onboarding and integration, I want to commend the team on the quick response when it comes to technical support. Most importantly, with ADVANCE AI's eKYC process, our time previously spent on manual review is freed up to focus on what matters to the brand: product innovation and customer experience. Now, we can make buying and selling online even easier and more reliable – with better onboarding," Nita added.
Want to know how you can automate eKYC too? Contact us today or book a complimentary consultation session to learn more.