Jakarta. Social media giant Facebook and US digital payment company PayPal have invested an undisclosed amount in Gojek Indonesia, joining forces with a ride-sharing and food delivery company keen to expand the market share of its digital payment service GoPay among small and medium enterprises. 

Gojek said in a statement on Wednesday its latest funding round also included Gojek's previous investors Google and Chinese internet giant Tencent. 

"By working together, we have the opportunity to achieve something truly unique in line with our effort to push digitalization in the business and providing millions of customers the benefits of the digital economy," Gojek Co-Chief Executive Andre Soelistyo said. 

This was Facebook's first investment in an Indonesian company. Matt Idema, the chief operating officer of Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, said the collaboration between Gojek, Facebook and WhatsApp would "help millions of MSMEs [micro, small and medium enterprises] and their customers to join the largest digital economy community in Southeast Asia."

Gojek now has 170 million users throughout Southeast Asia who made billions of transactions using GoPay for the company's ride-sharing and food delivery services. 

Gojek competes with Singapore-based Grab, which in Indonesia collaborates with the OVO digital wallet.

Other digital wallet services in Indonesia include Dana and LinkAja, which are backed by state-owned banks. 

Gojek said PayPal's involvement would also mean its users will be able to access the latter's network of 25 million merchants worldwide. 

"Now, with the contribution of the best technology companies in the world as partners, we believe we can continue to provide world-class products and services that are unique to all parties in the Gojek ecosystem," Gojek Co-Chief Executive Kevin Aluwi said. 

Farhad Maleki, PayPal's head of corporate and venture development for the Asia Pacific, said the collaboration would open up new opportunities for merchants not yet connected to a banking service. 

In a separate statement, Gojek said it had helped more than 100,000 MSMEs expand online in the past three months amid the coronavirus pandemic.