JAKARTA – TikTok and YouTube are considering joining Meta in applying for e-commerce licences in Indonesia after South-east Asia’s largest economy banned online shopping on social media platforms, according to people familiar with the discussions., saying it sought to protect small and midsize offline merchants and marketplaces, and to ensure users’ data was protected.
The law was a particular blow to TikTok, which pledged in June to invest billions of dollars in South-east Asia, mainly in Indonesia where it has a base of 125 million users, in a major push to build its e-commerce service TikTok Shop. TikTok is holding talks for potential partnerships with local e-commerce players, including GoTo’s Tokopedia, while building a standalone TikTok Shop app for Indonesia.
TikTok said it could neither confirm nor deny it was considering seeking a licence. Tokopedia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.