Mastercard and Fasset Collaborate to Drive Financial Inclusion in Indonesia

Middle Eastern digital assets gateway, Fasset Technologies has partnered with American payments giant, Mastercard Inc to jointly build solutions that will help drive financial inclusion in Indonesia. According to the announcement detailing the partnership, the ultimate goal of this collaboration is to “create economic opportunities for the underserved segment.”

With more than 90 million unbanked individuals in Indonesia, pushing forth financial inclusion seems to be a very daunting move for startups around. By riding on the global strength and local influence of Mastercard, a slew of innovative solutions that can drive local adoption of new technologies that can improve access to critical financial services will be explored.

Fasset’s role in this will be to use its technologies to digitize banking services in a simplified manner.

“The world is changing at an unprecedented rate. With more people relying on digital assets and technologies to become resilient, there is a need for key players in the public and private sectors to come together to create solutions that can lead to new opportunities and solutions for wider financial inclusion. Mastercard is delighted to provide its solutions in digital payments and cyber-security for Fasset to support Indonesia’s efforts in financial inclusion and advance broader access to digital technologies”, said Navin Jain, Country Manager, Indonesia, Mastercard.

Indonesia and Growing Hostility to Crypto

While the duo of Mastercard and Fasset have vested interests in driving financial inclusion through digital currencies, there might be a conflict of interest as the current regulatory climate in Indonesia is notably becoming relatively more hostile.

While the Indonesian market regulator banned banking institutions from dealing with crypto trading as reported by TheCoinRise back in January, the country also had the target to impose a 0.1% tax on profits realized from crypto investments.

Despite these signs, Fasset is focused on promoting “financial inclusion and democratizing access to opportunity by enabling a new wave of digital asset owners in our target emerging markets”, said Hendra Suryakusuma, Country Director, Indonesia, Fasset.

With digital training education and the introduction of financial tools with the help of Mastercard, the duo is unlikely to get negatively embroiled with regulators for now.