KONTAN.CO.ID - JAKARTA. The expansion of PT GOTO Gojek Tokopedia Tbk (GOTO) into the creditworthiness analysis business as known as credit scoring, through Tokoscore, has received a positive response from market players. Analysts think this strategy will bring two advantages at once.

First, Tokoscore will be the GOTO Financial backbone in the financing business to customers and merchants. Second, Tokoscore owns promising business potential by bringing in revenue. Interestingly, through this alternative credit scoring business, GOTO has an opportunity to gain income from outside of its three main business segments, namely: on-demand, e-commerce, and financial technology.

“From Tokoscore, of course, the main hope is a more optimal lending so that it helps to accelerate GOTO’s profitability,” the Investindo Nusantara Sekuritas analyst, Pandu Dewanto, told reporters.

Tokoscore with its ICS services, Pandu said, could be a boost to GOTO's revenue sourced from outside the ecosystem. A potential source of large income comes from clients of banking, multifinance, and fintech to reach customers who do not have a creditworthiness footprint from Bank Indonesia (BI) yet.

In addition to bringing benefits to GOTO, this credit scoring service also provides great benefits in accelerating financial inclusion. Tokoscore can bridge MSME (Micro, Small, Middle, Enterprises) actors, or individual debtors, in getting access to financing from formal financial institutions, both banks and non-banks.

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Moreover, GOTO recently launched the GoPaylater Cicil service on the Tokopedia platform. This innovative way of paying allows consumers to make purchases in installments for up to 12 months.

After targeting consumers, GOTO is believed to be channeling financing to its business partners, both Tokopedia merchants and GoFood Partners. So, in this context, Tokoscore will play a very important role to select potential and high-quality potential debtors.

Meanwhile, the Mirae Asset Sekuritas Senior Investment Information, Nafan Aji Gusta, assessed Tokoscore as an Innovative Credit Scoring (ICS) service provider company affiliated with Tokopedia, and is listed and supervised by the Financial Services Authority (OJK), as another potential business of GOTO.

“This is interesting for partners who are not bankable yet, such as Gojek driver partners and of course for MSMEs. The most important thing is that this encourages financial inclusion,” Nafan said.

Nafan also assessed that the presence of innovation through Tokoscore is a surefire step for GOTO in accelerating profitability. “Indeed, in achieving this profitability requires stages. But (Tokoscore) is a breakthrough and in encouraging financial inclusion is something that certainly has the potential to reap appreciation from market participants,” Nafan clarified.

So, the ICS services that are offered by Tokoscore are not only enjoyed by GOTO Financial. Other financial institutions can also use this service to mitigate non-performing loan (NPL) risks. Its reachability is not only to people who have entered the radar of formal financial institutions (Bankable) but also to be able to provide score data for people who are still in the unbanked and underbanked categories.

“I think this is a breakthrough from GOTO and this is an issuer corporate action that brings extraordinary benefits to the community. The government will definitely also support issuers who encourage financial inclusion,” Nafan continued.

Moreover, the World Bank data (World Bank) recorded that Indonesia ranks fourth in the world in terms of the number of people who do not have access to banking. The number reaches 95 million Indonesian adults who do not have accounts in financial institutions.

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On the other hand, the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2021 as stated in the paper entitled “A New Approach to Credit Assessment Accelerates Financial Inclusion in Developing Countries” mentioned that alternative forms of credit assessment such as ICS are successfully used in emerging markets due to the extensive e-Commerce consumer consumption data.

For the internal GOTO ecosystem, Nafan added, Tokoscore ICS services will greatly help the GoTo Financial business line, especially because it has been used by Findaya for GoPayLater and GoModal product services. Especially in supporting the prudent aspects of GOTO's financial services business.

“This also answers the challenges for GOTO in order to suppress NPLs. GOTO does need to be selective to its prospective customers so that it must apply kyc (Know Your Customer) principles with its customers,” Nafan explained.

Nafan sees GOTO as the opportunity to become the master of the ICS service market through Tokoscore given its strong ecosystem and the ability to maximize big data. On the other hand, there are not many players of similar services yet. Currently, players in ICS services other than Tokoscore are Ascore.ai affiliated with Amartha, SkorLife, MyIdScore, and Fineoz.

As known, ICS services from Tokoscore have just launched the latest products, namely Income Prediction and Fraud Flags. Income Prediction can provide a prediction of the income value of potential borrowers to help strategic partners in the financial industry - such as banks or fintech - assess the capacity of potential borrowers. Meanwhile, Fraud Flags can provide information if potential borrowers have suspicious activities or behavior on the e-commerce platform, Tokopedia.

“Various ICS products or services from Tokoscore are expected to make it easier for strategic partners in the financial industry to assess the capacity and character of prospective borrowers in order to provide financial services to more Indonesians, especially those who have not yet gained access to financial services," said Tokoscore CEO, Herman Widjaja.

Tokoscore products or services only provide scoring results to strategic partners, never in the form of user-specific data. This product has ISO 27001 certification so that strategic partners can use ICS services from Tokoscore safely.

Editor: Yudho Winarto