Ride-hailing service Grab partners Indonesia's Lippo for mobile payments

By Eveline Danubrata

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab said on Friday it is teaming up with Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group to roll out a mobile payment platform in its biggest market, extending its reach beyond transport.

The partnership, which will give Grab access to 50 million existing customers in Indonesia, is Grab's first step to launching mobile payment solutions more widely across Southeast Asia, it said in a statement.

"Grab's partnership with the Lippo Group to develop a universal payments platform will be a leap forward for e-money in Indonesia," said Anthony Tan, a Harvard Business School graduate who co-founded Grab in 2012.

Customers will be able to use the Grab app to make payments across Lippo's retailers, including its department stores, cinemas and e-commerce site.

Lippo director John Riady told Reuters last year that the Indonesian media-to-property conglomerate planned to launch payment, chat and other online services in 2016. (http://reut.rs/29XSdBU)

Starting as a taxi-hailing app in 2012, Grab has since expanded to private cars and motorbikes. It currently has 320,000 drivers in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

So far, Grab has raised a total of around $700 million from investors including Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, Japan's SoftBank and an arm of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings.

Tan told reporters earlier this week that Grab still has a "significant" amount of capital left.

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Stephen Coates)