ANT Group Will Create Joint Lab In Indonesia To Support SMEs Go Digital

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Communication and Information received a visit from ANT Financial, a leading financial technology (fintech) company, to offer cooperation in three important areas for the advancement of Indonesia's digital economy.

"The first is about Joint Lab, the second is about DTS (Digital Talent Scholarship) and also digital talent so that there is transfer of technology, and the third is about data governance," said Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi on Friday, April 19.

Seeing the importance of the payment system, through this collaboration, Budi said, ANT Financial is willing to accelerate digital economy, especially digital payments and fintech in Indonesia.

ANT International CEO Senior Vice President of Ant Group, Yang Peng, added that the presence of the Joint Lab will be focused on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), so that the digital transformation can run well.

"So, join the lab under the guidance of the Ministry, and we focus on three things. The first thing is to promote all technology financial services inclusive SMEs," said Peng.

The second thing is cross-border collaboration. Thus, this technology is expected to help cross-border business partnerships by prioritizing privacy and without having to share any raw data to monitor.

And the final focus of the presence of this Joint Lab is artificial intelligence (AI) technology and also AI-generated content. Thus, this can prevent identity falsification.

"Currently, there are actually many financial institutions, either e-wallets or banks, that face major challenges in terms of security. For example, nowadays, some wallets, several bank applications, and they will do e-KYC," he explained.

Peng added, "But in the era of AIGC technology, basically anyone can use AI to make fake visuals, even their voice can be fake. So, for this Joint lab, we want to share our technology to help all financial institutions in Indonesia to maintain their business."

Furthermore, Peng said that the Joint Lab is planned to be built in one of the two cities in Indonesia, namely Jakarta and Yogyakarta.