Super apps as escrow platforms: An ecosystem analysis of Grab Indonesia

In this paper, we explore the Southeast Asian super app Grab as an exemplar of how digital platforms function as transactional infrastructures. We focus on Grab’s operations in Indonesia, where it has become the leading peer-to-peer (P2P) payment provider and a leading actor in the ‘financial inclusion’ of unbanked and underbanked populations. The foundational basis of our argument is that Grab should be understood as a financial business rather than as a transport provider. We argue that the systematic capture of P2P transactions in the Grab ecosystem reflects its strategic design as a business built on financial intermediation. By detailing this proposition, we seek to make a number of interventions in debates surrounding super app business models, which are commonly seen as an archetype for platform economies in the Asian region. In the first place, we posit that super apps should be understood primarily as transactional infrastructures. Our second intervention is a methodological one, in which we prototype business ecosystem mapping of the ‘back end’ of super apps. On the basis of our findings, we define Grab as an ‘escrow platform’. That is, a business designed to increase the quantum and velocity of on-platform transactions, with the underlying imperative of leveraging the float of user funds under the custodianship of the platform.