Payfazz's solution for Indonesia's unbanked impresses Insignia

Singapore

THERE has been a lot of talk about Indonesia's unbanked population, but not many businesses are actually walking the talk to serve them, says Insignia Ventures Partners founding managing partner Tan Yinglan.

Fintech startup Payfazz, however, has been raising an offline army of agents to literally cross that last mile, he says.

Insignia led a pre-Series A investment round via convertibles into the Indonesian startup in September 2017, alongside other notable investors such as alumni of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, Vertex Ventures, Convergence Ventures and MDI Ventures. It declined to reveal the size of the deal.

Payfazz ropes in offline agents across Indonesia to help people without bank accounts access digital financial services with cash. In Payfazz's initial model, these agents accept cash from users and convert that cash into balances on the users' Payfazz accounts that can then be used to pay bi…