Alibaba-backed e-commerce platform Lazada has onboarded e-wallet provider and Grab’s official payment partner Ovo for its Indonesian customers, the company announced on Thursday. The partnership confirms Alibaba’s continued interest to integrate its services with Southeast Asian super app Grab.
It is the second tie-up between businesses controlled by the two companies. In early November, Grab and Lazada Vietnam combined their product offerings, allowing Vietnamese users to access Grab’s services from Lazada’s app and vice versa.
Ovo is also the only e-wallet available on Tokopedia, another Alibaba-backed e-commerce platform. Even though Grab’s stake in Ovo has never been publicly disclosed, it is reported to have significant influence.
In September, Bloomberg reported that Alibaba was planning to inject USD 3 billion into Grab, which would make it its largest venture in Southeast Asia. A closer integration will give Alibaba access to the data of millions of users in eight countries, a growing delivery fleet, as well as a stake in the digital wallet and fintech business that Grab operates. A deeper integration between Lazada and Grab would also help fight off the attack from Sea Group’s Shopee.
Grab and Lazada share investor DNA. Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank backs Grab and holds a stake in Alibaba, which owns Lazada—another signal that the Chinese juggernaut might follow through with its investment plan.
