The signing of the agreement will allow PayTren and Grab to combine the forces of its partners and driver-partners, and form Indonesia’s largest network of more than 3 million micro-entrepreneurs.

The strategic partnership between Grab and PayTren will give micro-entrepreneurs in Indonesia more new business opportunities and provide more people in their local communities with access to online services, in line with the development of Indonesia’s digital economy.

Starting January 2018, PayTren partners in Indonesia can recruit driver-partners for Grab and earn additional income. This will mean more employment opportunities as Grab driver-partners in more cities and towns across Indonesia.

The PayTren app will be integrated with Grab’s Kudo platform, making available Grab driver recruitment as an additional service in the PayTren app. PayTren partners can look forward to offering a new service as an additional entrepreneurship opportunity and improve their livelihoods.

Indonesia’s digital economy continues to soar with rapid rates of internet adoption, yet many in the middle economy in Indonesia do not benefit from the corresponding economic opportunities as they do not have access to formal financial services like bank accounts. The agent business model of PayTren and Grab’s Kudo tech platform has proven to be a successful, local way to tackle this challenge. PayTren partners and Kudo agents help Indonesian consumers who have little or no digital experience to access online services. In turn agents get additional revenue; since Grab driver recruitment was added as a service in Grab’s Kudo tech platform, Kudo agents earn up to 30% in additional monthly income.

One example of an agent who’s seen success this way is Ai Sumiati, a Kudo agent in Jakarta. “I own a store selling aquariums and decorative fish. Business in our store varies from day to day, which is why we were happy to find more ways to secure a consistent income. I use the Grab-Kudo tech platform to sell mobile airtime, electricity top-ups as well as recruit 60 Grab driver-partners a month. Today, this represents over 30% of my monthly income,” said Sumiati.

“Partnering with Grab is a step for PayTren into the world of Financial Technology and SME empowerment, which supports PayTren’s core business in empowering the ummah. PayTren and Grab have the same vision of Indonesia’s future. We want to enable the Indonesian middle class and help them earn income through the digital economy. As a start, our PayTren partners can benefit from the income for referring drivers to the Grab platform. We are looking forward to exploring additional ways to bring the digital economy to everyday Indonesians,” said Ustadz Yusuf Mansur, Founder & Owner, PayTren.

PayTren today has a network of partners from all across Indonesia, attracting profiles as varied as farmers, housewives, SME owners to white-collar employees. Partners sign up for a range of income opportunities, which include selling airtime and internet packages, electricity vouchers and airline tickets - and now Grab driver-partner recruitment. From today, PayTren partners will be trained on how to sign up new Grab drivers.

“With PayTren, we add a partner who shares our commitment to bringing digital income opportunities to the middle economy across urban and rural Indonesia. Today, we work with drivers in more than 100 cities and agents in more than 500 cities and towns in Indonesia. By adding PayTren’s scale and presence in rural Indonesia, we’re confident we can accelerate the pace and depth of our expansion across Indonesia,” said Ongki Kurniawan, Managing Director, GrabPay Indonesia.

Earlier in 2017, Grab announced its US$700 million ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ 2020 Masterplan to support Indonesia’s goal of becoming the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia by 2020. For Phase 1 of this plan, Grab opened an R&D centre in Kebayoran Baru in Jakarta and committed to investing in local payments startups, including the acquisition of Kudo, the leading Indonesian O2O startup. In May, Grab launched Phase 2 of ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ and committed to helping 5 million micro-entrepreneurs earn income from the digital economy in Indonesia by the end of 2018.

The partnership with PayTren furthers this ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ goal and is another step forward in Grab’s vision of improving lives in Indonesia. Grab now has more than 3 million micro-entrepreneurs - including drivers, Kudo agents and PayTren partners - in its network.