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Korea’s BC Card to buy Indonesian IT firm for SE Asia biz growth

2022. 08. 24


(BC Card CEO Choi Won-Seok (left) and Cranium CEO William King pose after signing a deal for BC Card to acquire Cranium on Aug. 12, 2022, at BC Card headquarters in Seoul)


BC Card Co., a South Korean financial services provider, agreed to acquire an Indonesian IT company as it expands its businesses into overseas markets such as Southeast Asia.

BC Card said on Friday it has signed a deal to buy a 67% stake in Cranium Indonesia, but did not provide further details such as financial terms.

Cranium has been working on digital projects, especially in the financial and communications sectors, for major clients such as Bank Mandiri, the country’s largest state-run bank, and Telkom Indonesia, a multinational telecom conglomerate.

“We aim to develop global IT services as a new sector of BC Card’s overseas businesses through Cranium, fostering it into a new growth engine,” said BC Card CEO Choi Won-Seok.

BC Card is developing an international financial settlement system to connect Indonesia with other Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Thailand.

In May, BC Card was selected as an overseas partner in a global digital payment project promoted by the Indonesian government. Last year, the company took over Wirecard Vietnam, the country’s top banking point-of-service (POS) terminal supplier.

With its acquisition of Cranium, BC Card plans to locally develop systems for individual markets going forward. Until now, the Korean company has been working on system development only at home.

“We will be able to support domestic and foreign companies looking to expand globally at lower cost,” said a BC Card official. “We can also carry out projects being demanded by local firms in a timely manner even amid a serious manpower shortage in global IT development sectors.”

BC Card said it will regularly engage in technology transfers with Cranium while boosting its competitive edge by cooperating with the University of Indonesia to secure talented IT workers.