JAKARTA, Indonesia—It’s a rainy rush hour in Jakarta and you’ve miraculously managed to hail a taxi. But when you go to pay, the driver doesn’t have change. Soon, BlackBerry will have a solution for that thanks to new features on its BBM Money application.
The app is already available in Indonesia and only Indonesia – one of the biggest markets for the Waterloo, Ontario-based company.
BlackBerry Ltd launched a pilot mobile payment system last year using the popular messaging application, or BBM, in cooperation with Bank Permata BNLI.JK +2.69%, one of the nation’s best-known consumer banks.
The current application offers basic mobile wallet services, such as telephone and electricity bill payments. Users can also buy cellular air time (as long as they’re in Indonesia) and perform banking services with Permata all through their BlackBerry devices.
Later this year, BlackBerry will add more features, one of which will allow users to book and pay for taxis using the BBM Money application, as well as book and pay restaurant bills.
“In the future, you may be working in Singapore, but you can transfer air-time from Telkomsel [a telecom company] to your relatives in Indonesia,” Matthew Talbot, BlackBerry’s senior vice president for emerging solutions, said Thursday.
With the new BBM Money, users can shop online with less hassle than with many other methods of online shopping, regardless of who they bank with or whether or not they have a bank account. They’ll also be able to use the service with other operating systems, such as Android and iOS.
Mr. Talbot says BlackBerry is upbeat about the success of BBM Money in Indonesia given that BBM is one of the most popular instant messaging applications in the country. The company has seen the number of active monthly users grow by 150% in the past 12 months.
It’s likely to help that BBM Money is well suited to Indonesia, where debit card penetration is still relatively low at 11% but the growth of e-commerce is the second-fastest in the world after China.
After launching in Indonesia, BlackBerry will look to launch the application in other places, such as Latin American, that have market conditions similar to Indonesia, Mr. Talbot said.