Having raised $36 million through an IPO in February last year, Aladdin says the new app will offer a profit sharing scheme (mudarabah contract), no minimum balance for opening a new account and no fees on many services.

Jakarta: Indonesian digital Islamic bank, Aladin Bank has announced that it will launch a mobile application by March, in time for Ramadan and with the aim of offering its Sharia compliant banking services to an underserved segment.

Aladin Bank CEO Dyota Marsudi told Salaam Gateway that the mobile banking app will provide several benefits including a profit sharing scheme (mudarabah contract), no minimum balance for opening a new account, no minimum monthly balance, no transfer fees, no withdrawal cash fees or bill payment fees.

“We are still expanding our collaboration with strategic partners from the Sharia finance ecosystem and each of them have different expectations. Partner satisfaction is critical so we have to meet all those expectations. The app should be reliable,” Marsudi said. 

Aladin Bank has already collaborated with several partners, including convenience store chain Sumber Alfaria Trijaya, known as Alfamart, the Indonesia hajj fund management institution (BPKH), telemedicine provider Halodoc, and Facebook. 

With a 15,000 brick-and-mortar store network, Alfamart is an ideal partner, Aladin says, to integrate online and offline service and create an omnichannel strategy. With an average of 200,000 Indonesian pilgrims performing hajj annually, BPKH is also an important partner the bank noted, as well as Facebook, which helped millions of Indonesian SMEs go digital, especially during pandemic. 

By going digital, Aladin Bank said it doesn't need to run physical branches and can become more efficient in terms of operational cost and cost of funds. 

“Penetration and customer growth rate will increase through these strategic collaborations, and it is the key for our long term business growth,” Marsudi said.

Aladin Bank raised 515 billion Rupiah ($36 million) through an IPO in February last year. It allocated around 306.2 billion Rupiah for IT investment, where around 48.9 billion Rupiah of it was realised last year and the rest 257.3 billion rupiah will be spent this year, it said.

The publicly listed company chose Google Cloud as technology partner to enhance data analytics, machine learning, cloud service and scalable infrastructure, it said. 

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