Hello, everyone. This is Reggy Susanto, Head of Investor Relations. Welcome to the PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia Tbk third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Joining us today are Patrick Walujo, President, Director, and Group CEO, and Jacky Lo, Group CFO. Also present are Thomas Husted, our Chief Operating Officer ; Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo, our President of On-Demand Services ; Melissa Siska Juminto, President of E-commerce ; Hans Patuwo, President of Financial Technology Services ; and Kevin Widlansky, Head of GoTo Logistics. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. We would like to highlight that the information presented today has been prepared solely based on unaudited, consolidated, selected financial information for the three months ended September 30, 2023.
We have also submitted and published our consolidated financial statements as of, and for the nine months ended September 30, 2023. As a reminder, today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements about the company's future business and financial performance, as well as the discussion of certain non-Indonesian financial accounting standard measures as complements to the Indonesian Financial Accounting Standards disclosures. Before using and/or relying on these measurements and forward-looking statements, please take note of our disclaimer and cautionary statements disclosed in our earnings presentation and press release. During the earnings call, we'll be going through our results of operations and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website. For more information and additional disclosures on our recent business and financial performance, please refer to our earnings press release and supplemental presentation, which can be found on our IR website. With that, I will turn the call over to Patrick.
Thank you, Reggy. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Last quarter, we promised that we would act with precision and urgency as we aim to continue our progress towards profitability, while returning to growth by expanding our total addressable market. Despite a challenging competitive environment, I am pleased to report that Group GTV is returning to positive quarter-on-quarter growth, following two quarters of sequential decline, driven primarily by improvements in our e-commerce and on-demand businesses. This is due to our broader strategy to expand our addressable market through the development of products and services that are useful and accessible for everyone, particularly by the price-conscious consumer segments. Our on-demand affordability offerings are both spurring user growth and boosting driver productivity.
For instance, in Q3, drivers who took Food Hemat orders on top of regular orders more than doubled their orders per hour, while GoCar Hemat has increased drivers' hourly orders by over 35%. This uplift in productivity will enable us to provide Hemat in a sustainable manner in more areas, while keeping driver income stable. This will allow us to broaden our ODS consumer base by 50%-60% in the medium term, as per our original thesis. In e-commerce, we have pursued a co-investment program with core merchants, which increased the average GTV of participating merchants by over 40%, enabling us to increase overall GTV while maintaining profitability. In fintech, the GoPay app has created more than 5 million downloads. Approximately 50% of transacting users are either new or reactivated, and around a quarter of them have subsequently transacted on either Gojek or Tokopedia.
We have also focused on our loan book, which has returned to a 44% quarter-on-quarter trajectory, reaching IDR 1.4 trillion, equivalent to threefold increase year-on-year, while maintaining profitability with NPL levels well below comparable products in the market. In logistics, our technology has allowed us to ramp up in-house delivery in high-density areas and aggregate third-party deliveries elsewhere at the lowest possible cost per order. This efficiency has further reduced shipping subsidy cost per order by 22% quarter-on-quarter, on top of the 15% savings we achieved during the first half. This total savings of 30% year-to-date means we have already exceeded our saving targets of 30% for this year, as indicated in our last earnings call.
More broadly, from a group perspective, we have delivered additional OpEx improvements as we further right-sized our structure, merging functions to eliminate redundancies and leveraging our technology to reduce cost of revenue, which Jacky will touch later. We have achieved much in a short time, but we are at the beginning of our transformation, and there is a long road ahead. Last quarter, I announced a top-to-bottom strategy review. Initial results have cast some additional light on the path forward as a group. As mentioned previously, by cutting back on incentives, we made products and services within our platform less accessible. This has meant that to date, we have not been able to effectively address price-conscious consumers, who are the biggest segment of the market. As such, our strategy going forward can be described based on three priorities. Firstly, to broaden our addressable market, particularly among value-conscious consumers.
Secondly, to increase monetization. Thirdly, to strengthen synergies that will fuel our ecosystem flywheel. With regard to broadening our addressable market, in ODS, we are building out our affordable products tactically in priority areas. GoCar Hemat, which is already profitable, is being rolled out in more cities, and we are also expanding the low-cost selection on offer within GoFood Hemat, while streamlining its operations. This means increased density, better backing, a reduced cost to serve, as well as improved driver productivity, all of which will benefit our customers. Additionally, earlier this month, we officially launched GoRide Transit, the first and only platform in the world to seamlessly blend public transport and ride hailing in one booking, and we are honored to have this groundbreaking innovation recognized by the President of Indonesia and his government.
Also, to further expand our two-wheel offerings to budget consumers, we are piloting GoRide Nego, which allows consumers and drivers to communicate directly and agree a trip fare with each other. This is the latest example of our continuing innovation designed to unlock new customers. Tokopedia is highly resonant with our core consumers, those who prioritize and are willing to pay for convenience and reliability. This consumer profile fundamentally sets our platform apart from the competition. However, we acknowledge that by optimizing for this audience, we have lost market share. To reverse this trend and win the market perception battle, we have effectively bolstered our business model, enhanced our products and technology, reduced platform fees, and reinvested in marketing efforts.
To expedite our growth trajectory, we must persistently pursue such tactical investment, streamline execution, and explore strategic opportunities that will fortify our market positioning. With that in mind, we are supercharging our budget-friendly consumer appeal with a greater assortment of products geared toward this group, while also investing in a better core platform experience that makes it easier for them to find deals that appeal to them. Underpinning this, our drive to improve the discovery process for all users. We continue to invest in predictive AI to capture real-time consumer insights for data-driven decision making. This will improve our ability to evolve our SKU assortment, so we stay ahead of consumer needs while also personalizing content.
Moving on to monetization, we have identified large and targeted opportunities in the advertising space, and we are using this to fuel merchant growth and monetization across our ODS and e-commerce platforms. Our fintech business is also key to accelerating monetization. Our lending business is gaining traction, and we expect this to accelerate as we prudently scale up our cash loan product, which has the highest margin of all our lending products. We launched cash loans on Tokopedia in July and in the GoPay app in September. At the same time, our BNPL product has become the number one BNPL on Tokopedia. We have also launched GoPay Tabungan or Savings by Jago, a first-of-its-kind collaboration in Indonesia, combining the simplicity of e-money with the benefits of a bank account.
This helps unlock the value of GoPay as a payment method because consumers can have an unlimited balance with no transaction limits. GoPay Tabungan has recorded more than 1 million transactions and 200,000 users since its launch less than two weeks ago. The product will increase Bank Jago current and savings accounts, directly translating to lower cost of funds for both Jago and GTF within our loan channeling partnerships, ultimately resulting in higher margins. Today, close to 60% of our loan book is funded by Bank Jago and increasing. Our partnership with Jago remains central to our strategy. We recently worked with them to migrate the payroll of GoTo Group employees over to Bank Jago, and we will continue to look for new ways to deepen our collaboration.
Finally, the real potential in our business lies in its ecosystem synergies that create a multiplier or flywheel effect that delivers value for our component businesses that goes beyond their individual fundamentals. The recent launch of GoTo Passport marks a new milestone in the integration of the GoTo ecosystem, considerably strengthening our competitive advantage. GoTo Passport is a unifying technology that underpins all of our platforms, giving us a much deeper understanding of our consumers and how they interact across our ecosystem. This will power our unified ad strategy to increase personalization and relevance among other possible use cases. In early October, we began experimenting with a universal subscription program, efficiently combining the existing benefits of free delivery across Tokopedia and GoFood to foster user engagement across food and e-commerce.
Ours is the only platform in Indonesia with this unique capability, and we intend to do much more in this space. GTF's role in the reduction of shipping subsidies, as mentioned earlier, adds exponential value for Tokopedia users, and this is expected to increase further, driven by expansion of our in-house deliveries to include merchant fulfill orders. To support continued aggregation and cost reduction, we will continue investing in fulfillment to drive supply chain efficiency by creating more high-density delivery corridors. All these initiatives are critical to create differentiated long-term competitive advantage. They will require time and investment, financially, as well as resource and talent-wise, across all our business units, particularly within GTF and GTL. At the same time, if we are to win market perception battle, we must preserve tactical flexibility in the immediate term.
This will enable us to keep growing our top line, giving us a strong base from which to grow our, as our strategic plan bears fruit. The increasingly competitive operating environment in the ODS and e-commerce spaces, which started to intensify in third quarter, means we must invest to maintain our market leadership. We have, and will continue to act prudently on this. As a result, although we continue to work towards our goal to reach positive adjusted EBITDA at the group level within Q4, there is now some additional risk with respect to this timeline because of the profit pool of ODS and e-commerce is likely to narrow compared to what was originally expected. That said, we remain confident that we will end the year within our fiscal year 2023 adjusted EBITDA guidance range that we set in the previous quarter.
Despite the investments we are making, ODS and e-commerce are still on track to achieve adjusted EBITDA positive within Q4. In fact, ODS adjusted EBITDA was already positive in third quarter at IDR 17 billion, if we exclude allocated corporate costs. We will continue to optimize OpEx to create additional margin. Our cash position remains strong, and we have ample liquidity and runway, regardless of the current competitive environment, with no immediate need for further external funding. This is why today we are also announcing that we no longer intend to execute on the international IPO that was disclosed in the company's IPO prospectus and approved by shareholders at the 2022 AGMS. Should we decide to carry out an international IPO in the future, we will seek a renewed shareholder approval.
In summary, over the last three months, we have been on a fast track to re-institute our growth while homing on profitability. We will further accelerate our initiatives to more effectively tap into Indonesia's vast market opportunities. I will now turn the call over to Jacky to review our business performance for the period. Jacky, please go ahead.
Thank you, Patrick. Good day, everyone. During the quarter, amidst intensifying competition, we regained our growth momentum as group GTV improved by 5% quarter-over-quarter. While we continue to narrow our losses, we've entered another quarter of sequential improvement to our adjusted EBITDA, which improved by 22% quarter-over-quarter. On a year-on-year basis, GTV for the period declined 6% to IDR 151.3 trillion due to the tightening of incentives that we have been implementing since early this year. Our adjusted EBITDA improved 74% to -IDR 942 billion, or -0.62% of GTV. Our group level contribution margin remained positive at IDR 1.1 trillion, or 0.75% of GTV, a year-on-year improvement of 149 basis points.
Improvement in profitability are underpinned by disciplined management of incentives and product marketing, which were reduced by 36% year-on-year, reflecting total quarterly savings of IDR 2 trillion. Competition in the market meant that we needed to slightly increase our spending by 2% quarter-on-quarter. But as Patrick mentioned, such increases are always carried out strategically in a way that returns the most value for the business. Monetization improvements across our business are also ongoing, as the number of profitable users and the share of GTV they brought to the group remains stable quarter-on-quarter. Gross revenue grew by 1% year-on-year, reaching IDR 6 trillion, and the group take rate increased by 29 basis points year-on-year, reaching 4% of GTV.
Last quarter, we mentioned that we have reduced fixed OpEx by around IDR 1 trillion on an annualized basis, and this quarter we have recognized further savings. On a year-on-year basis, we delivered a 19% reduction in fixed OpEx and a reduction of more than 25% in cloud and IT infrastructure costs, which is the largest part of our cost of revenue. These two translate into IDR 2.5 trillion in annualized fixed OpEx, and cloud and IT cost savings. In addition, during this quarter, we identified further annual savings of around IDR 450 billion across these two cost groups, which will be recognized over time. I'll now walk you through each of our four core segments. In on-demand services, adjusted EBITDA and contribution margin continued to improve on a year-on-year basis. Adjusted EBITDA reached - IDR 48 billion.
As a percentage of GTV, this represents a narrowing of 596 basis points year-on-year to -0.4%. Contribution margin grew to IDR 675 billion, or 5% of GTV, which is an improvement of 527 basis points year-on-year. Margins for GoCar Hemat remained positive in Q3, while we continued to invest in GoFood Hemat to drive adoption and scale. The GoFood Plus subscription program has encouraged consumers to transact more frequently, with subscribers now ordering almost 3x more frequently than non-subscribers. In October, we also decided to lower the commission rate for our four-wheel business in Singapore from 15%- 10% to drive supply growth. This should have minimal impact on our group take rate and expect our international business to remain contribution margin positive.
We also reduced our IT costs, thanks to our in-house mapping technology, which has enabled us to gradually lower our reliance on third-party mapping technology, resulting in around 40% quarter-over-quarter savings on mapping costs. GTV for on-demand services increased by 1% quarter-over-quarter to IDR 13.4 trillion, and gross revenue improved by 5% quarter-over-quarter to IDR 3 trillion, showing sequential improvement as we work to reactivate our growth momentum. Year-on-year comparisons showing decline of 12% in GTV, while revenues remain flat. Yet we are optimistic that our sequential top-line recovery will continue to gain momentum, supported by the adoption of our affordability offerings. Turning to our e-commerce business. During the quarter, we decided to strategically invest in the growth of our top funnel traffic to maintain market share by increasing marketing exposure and reducing platform fees.
As a result, e-commerce GTV improved by 6% quarter-on-quarter, while revenue improved by 1%, reaching IDR 62 trillion and IDR 2.2 trillion, respectively. We also kept our contribution margin stable on a quarter-on-quarter basis, with adjusted EBITDA improving by 3% quarter-on-quarter. On a year-on-year basis, these metrics continued to improve as we invest in a prudent manner, including the leveraging of merchant co-funding programs. Adjusted EBITDA narrowed to - IDR 222 billion on negative 0.36% of GTV, an improvement of 157 basis points year-on-year. Contribution margin reached IDR 415 billion or 0.67% of GTV, gaining 156 basis points year-on-year. GTV declined by 11% year-on-year due to attrition of low-quality users, resulting from significant incentive reductions over the past year.
However, gross revenue improved by 6% year-on-year as a result of various monetization improvements. Similar to on-demand service, we remain optimistic that our top-line recovery momentum will continue. Looking now at financial technology. Adjusted EBITDA reached - IDR 388 billion, or - 0.41% of GTV, an improvement of 47 basis points. Contribution margin reached a record IDR 77 billion, or 0.008% of GTV, which is an improvement of 38 basis points year-on-year. Our payment business also became contribution margin positive, driven by continuous efforts to drive promotion efficiency and the optimization of IT costs, which reduced spending on cloud service by 12% quarter-over-quarter.
Over the course of six weeks in the third quarter, we launched four new products and features: the GoPay app, cash loans on Tokopedia, cash loans on the GoPay app itself, and most recently, GoPay Tabungan or GoPay Savings by Jago. All of these launches represent continuous sustainable growth for fintech on the payment and lending sides of the business. GoTo Financial's GTV reached IDR 94.5 trillion in Q3, a quarter-on-quarter improvement of 4%, despite a slight moderation of 3% on a year-on-year basis. Gross revenue reached IDR 450 billion, up 13% quarter-on-quarter and 5% year-on-year, as we continue to grow our lending products, which have higher tech rates. This increase will be 25% year-on-year, if the impact of intercompany transaction is excluded.
We will continue to increase open loop expansion, especially now that we have launched the GoPay app to drive further budget consumer penetration in our financial service offerings. Finally, turning to logistics. Adjusted EBITDA continued to improve on a year-on-year basis, increasing by 63% in Q3 to reach - IDR 113 billion. Gross revenue declined year-on-year by 9% to IDR 530 billion, mainly driven by lower volume from e-commerce due to rationalization of incentives, which impact low-quality transactions. In addition to optimizing our fulfillment capability, we will continue to further drive down the cost of delivery by onboarding more third-party delivery partners and further development of our in-house routing technology.
To conclude, as Patrick mentioned, our cash position remains strong, with more than IDR 25.2 trillion in cash and cash equivalents and short-term time deposits, while net cash flow also declined significantly by 76% year-on-year. This means we have more than enough capital to sustain our business as we execute our group strategy to increase our target market, improve monetization, and strengthen synergies that will fuel our ecosystem flywheel. Looking forward, we'll continue to focus on achieving profitability while investing in sustainable long-term growth. With that, we will now like to open the call to your questions. Reggy, over to you.
Thank you, Jacky. We will now start our question and answer section. Please use the raise hand function to ask your questions. Please wait a moment while we assemble our roster. The first question comes from Ferry Wong from Citi. Please go ahead, Ferry, and ask your question. Ferry, please, unmute your mic.
Hello? Yeah, can you hear me now?
Yes, we can hear you. Thanks.
Hi. Hi, hi. Congratulations on a decent set of results. I have several questions. First, basically, Patrick, as you mentioned, that there is some additional risk on achieving the group-adjusted EBITDA target by fourth quarter as competition is intensifying. Could you basically elaborate more on how confident are you to achieve adjusted EBITDA positive by fourth quarter overall for the overall group? And second, are you changing your current guidance due to this risk, basically competition from other companies like Shopee and et cetera? And then practically, do you expect that the 2024 will be adjusted EBITDA positive? That's my first question.
Second question, could you share a bit more color on the fintech lending progress, including the fourth quarter of this year and also outlook for 2024? What will be your strategy in terms of increasing the penetration across the GoTo ecosystem, given that you just launched the GoPay Tabungan starting this month? Just to basically, well, for your GoTo Financial loan, basically, you're mentioning 60% market share. If I were to take back from the data from Bank Jago, IDR 850 billion to GoTo Financial loan, that means that you are achieving around IDR 1.4 trillion, so it's about 44% increase. Are you still basically expecting another 44% increase every quarter over the next several quarters?
Lastly, on GoTo, GoRide Nego, is this to compete directly with Maxim or inDrive? Will this be take rate or contribution, and contribution margin dilutive? How can you ensure that there'll be more cannibalization impact? That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you, Ferry, for your question. I think there are three parts of the questions. One is about confidence level and guidance in terms of profitability for quarter four and for the full year. The second question is around fintech, which I will ask Hans to address. The last question is about GoRide Nego, which I will ask Catherine to discuss. In regard to your first question, first of all, we are not changing our guidance of adjusted profitability for the full year. As I mentioned, there is an increased risk in terms of our achieving our Q4 adjusted profitability target, mainly because of two reasons. The first reason is that competition remains very tough.
After experiencing sequential GTV growth in previous quarters, we feel that it is very important for us to maintain tactical flexibility to preserve our GTV healthiness, if you will. Because what we have learned is that once we lose momentum, it is a lot more expensive for us to regain that. And in doing so, at the same time, we will keep in mind that we have to be prudent and we have to be disciplined. But again, I just want to emphasize that it is absolutely critical for us to maintain that tactical flexibility in the fourth quarter.
The second reason is that after doing this full strategic review about our products and where our businesses stand, we take a very strong view that we still to make some investments in our core products to make ourselves more competitive, and this is through innovation, changing some of the business models, introducing new avenue for monetization. Advertising is going to be very important for us, and that's an area that we need to invest. As well as completing our basically addressing our talent gaps, talents and whatnot. So, those are the two reasons why we think that the Q4 profitability target now is at risk.
The narrowing profit pool from ODS and e-commerce than what we originally anticipated, it presents, presents a risk to us. Again, I would like to emphasize that we are not changing our target profitability for the full year. In term of your question about 2024, we cannot comment at this moment. We will get back to you at the right time. With that, I'll hand it over to Hans to address the question about fintech.
Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Ferry, for the question. Your math is accurate. We have grown loan outstanding approximately 44% quarter-on-quarter, and approximately about IDR 1.4 trillion in loan outstanding. Year-on-year, this represents a 3x growth, and we have done so while maintaining NPL levels below comparable products in the market. You know, towards your question about forward-looking, we are, let's say, quite encouraged with the speed of new products that we have just launched, right? As mentioned, Cash Loans on the GoPay app was just launched in September. Cash Loans in Tokopedia was just launched a couple of months ago. We're looking at these new products to power our growth into the future.
Cannot comment as to whether it will continue at a 44% clip, but only can say that we expect it to continue to grow at a healthy level, moving forward. Hopefully, that answers your question. Thank you.
Thank you, Hans. Cat, would you be able to give a response on the question about GoRide Nego?
Sure, Pat. Hi, Ferry. Thanks for the question. Yes, GoRide Nego is currently in pilot stage. This is very much well aligned with our affordability strategy, as you see on our GoCar Hemat, Food Hemat, and Transit as well. GoRide Nego will allow both our users and driver to have more control on their pricing, as the name implied, Nego, which we believe will improve the attractiveness of the product, given the both user feels that they have more control upon it. As part of the affordability strategy, we believe this will help increase our user base as well. It is, however, not CM dilutive, because the pricing is coupled between what the drivers offer and what the customer receive. I hope that explained and answer your question. Thank you.
Thanks, Ferry. Our next question comes from the line of Adrian Joezer from Mandiri Sekuritas. Adrian, your line is now open. Please unmute your microphone to ask your questions.
Thanks, Reggy. Yeah, just, three questions from me. The first one is actually as regards to the founder share sale. Can you actually comment as to the reasons why they had to sell at the current depressed valuation level? Whether the process of the remaining sale has actually been done? Also, related to these questions, do you actually intend to keep the current MVS structures going forward? That's my first question first. Should I go to the two other questions, Reggy?
Yes, please.
Okay, thanks. The second question is actually as regards to your GTV fee. Can you actually share more color as regards to the current run rate up to the end of October across the key segments? And what level of GTV growth are you actually looking to deliver in 2024? And the last question is actually as regards to the gross revenue take rate. What was your group level and segment-by-segment gross revenue take rate at the exit of the third quarter, such as in September? Thank you.
Thank you, Adrian. I think you have three questions. The first one is about the intent or the background of some of our founders selling their shares. And then the second question is about GTV outlook. And I think the third question was about take rates, right? I will hand it over to Tom to answer your first question about the founder sales.
Thanks, Patrick. Hi, Adrian. Nice to speak with you again. Thank you for the question. Let me cover the MVS issue. We recently disclosed to the IDX that a number of the MVS shareholders have indicated that they may sell a small portion of their shares in the medium term. If they make that decision, it would really be based on their own personal circumstances, and that's unrelated to the company's performance. Should this occur, each of them would remain a significant shareholder on GoTo, and we have been having ongoing discussions with them. Based on those latest discussions, they've clearly stated that they have no plan to sell beyond what has been disclosed. I, you know, the disclosure percentages were very small, if you recall.
They remain committed to GoTo, and most importantly, Andre and William are, you know, active members of the BOC and continue to work closely with management. So I hope that addresses the bulk of the question. Patrick, let me hand it back to you.
Thank you, Tom. Jacky, would you be able to address the last two questions?
Sure. Yep. Yeah. Hi, Adrian. So I think on your questions regarding the GTV outlook in Q4, so as you know, we actually do not provide any guidance on, like, quarterly GTV. But we can share some color commentary in terms of the GTV growth outlook or momentum we have seen so far. So just going back to Q3 first, right? So as we point out during the prepared remarks, we have been able to go back to seeing sequential growth, particularly for on-demand service and e-commerce. So we reversed that quarter-on-quarter decline from the previous two quarters. And at the same time, we were able to achieve improvement in our profitability. So if you look at overall contribution margin and adjusted EBITDA, that's improvement.
So we believe the, the momentum that we have seen in the top line, it, it will continue into the fourth quarter. So I think that so far in October, that confirms to our, observation. But, for... Let me just go through each of the segments real quick. So first of all, on-demand services. So as Catherine mentioned, we are moving forward, with the affordable strategy. So that will be, for example, for GoCar Hemat, that will be coming from, geographic expansion. So we are looking at increasing penetration and rolling out in more cities. And for GoFood Hemat, so that will be, just coming from, like, adding more affordable selections and low-cost, assortments. So that's gonna continue to help drive, the expansion, of our GTV.
In terms of e-commerce, we aim to sustain the progress we have made in Q3. We went back to a sequential improvement of 6% on the top line, and at the same time, we'll continue to make, like, fundamental improvements that appeal more to the budget consumers. I think during the prepared remarks, we talk about just investing and improving the assortment of the products. We are investing in the overall platform experience, especially on the discovery process for all the users. I think all this is gonna help, like, continue to gain positive traction and drive GTV growth.
I think also keep in mind, like, the fourth quarter typically is a stronger quarter for on-demand service and e-commerce because consumers, they have higher propensity to spend during the holiday season. For the fintech business, we expect GTV will be driven, coming from a couple of areas. First, on the consumer payments, so that will be from both the open and closed loop. The growth momentum in ODS e-commerce continues, so that's gonna help drive the consumer payments with Fintech. At the same time, with the GoPay app, that's gonna help us acquire new users as well. Last but not least, like the scaling of the lending business, especially on the cash loan, that's gonna help continue to drive GTV.
In terms of your questions on 2024 outlook, as we mentioned, we just recently finished our strategic review, and we are actually in the process of finalizing our current, next year's budget. At this point, we cannot comment on 2024 outlook. Yeah, we will provide more colors on the next call. I think your last question is on the take rate at the end of Q3, and kind of like what we expect the runway in October. Let me just go through the segment by segment. First, on demand service and fintech, the actual take rate increased in Q3. On demand service, it went from about 21.7%- 22.5%.
Especially that coming from a couple of initiatives. For example, Indonesia continued higher insurance penetration, and also in Singapore, the tier platform fee. That drove the increase in the take rate for on-demand service. For fintech, it went from 0.44%- 0.48%, and that's mainly driven by consumer lending. For e-commerce, the take rate actually declined slightly in Q3, from 3.8%- 3.6%. The reduction is actually coming from a couple of reasons. The first is because of the reduction of the platform fee in Q3, and also because of the category mix shift.
The digital goods and also some other categories with lower take rate actually increased quarter-over-quarter higher than the other higher take rate categories. If you look at the overall group take rate, it was down about 11 basis points, but that's impacted by the change in the mix. As mentioned, on-demand service, the GTV growth was about 1%, but this is historically the higher take rate segment, so it grew actually slower than the other two segments like e-commerce and fintech. Looking ahead to Q4, I think we believe, first of all, on-demand service, the take rate is kind of at the optimal level, but we believe ads will continue to help contribute to a higher take rate.
In Q4, that will be offset by the reduction in the commission rate in Singapore. For e-commerce and fintech, we believe there's still room for growth. First, on e-commerce, I think that will be primarily driven by advertising. Patrick mentioned this is a key priority for our future growth. Right now, advertising only contribute roughly about 1/4 of the overall revenue, and that translate into about 1% of the, 3.6% of the take rate.
So that's like, below our global peers. So we believe that's, room for growth, specifically coming from advertising. And for fintech, yeah, that will be primarily driven by consumer lending. So especially on the cash loan, 'cause the, the take rate, will be, like, much higher. So that will be the primary, like, driver for our monetization for the Fintech business. Yeah, I hope I answered your question, Adrian.
Thank you, Adrian. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Winipta from Indo Premier. Ryan, your line is now open.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Reggy. Hi. Hi, GoTo management. Just have three questions. I think the first one, I think you mentioned about the tough competition happening. Just wondering, what's the strategy from management to, I think, what you mentioned about actually winning the market perception battle from the existing competitions, both in ODS and e-commerce. I think this is putting aside from the existing initiative. Just wondering, what's actually the elephant in the room that management saw in these two segments? Should we expect more inflation in market share as well as GDP as a result of that? I think my second questions would be on, I think this is regarding the chatter in the market regarding Tokopedia to partner with the TikTok Shop.
I'm just wondering how realistic for Tokopedia to actually partner with TikTok Shop in their live commerce segment. The third one, I just wanted to ask the recent updates on the overseas operation, which is in Singapore and Vietnam. Are you looking to spend more in those two countries or just maintaining the status quo for now? That's all for my questions. Thank you.
Sure, Ryan, thank you for your question. I'll probably address both of them. Let me just first answer your question about the last, your last question. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on rumor and speculation in regard to TikTok Shop. In term of live commerce or live streaming, I would like to share with you that about 10 days ago, we started having pilot with Instagram Live, Tokopedia piloting with Instagram Live, doing live streaming, live stream collaboration. Still very early days. We are still experimenting, but that's a space to watch. Your first question is about market share growth of our businesses.
I think what I would like to say is that from my perspective, we have seen, probably seen the bottom, of our, in terms of our GMV or GTV growth, last quarter, because this quarter, as we explained to you, our ODS and e-commerce businesses, all, show growth on, top line, on a top-line basis. Obviously, we want this growth to be higher. If this growth is not faster than market growth, that implies that we are still, winning market. We are still losing market share. But what's important now is that we believe that we have cracked, what it takes to, to grow again.
That is on enhancing the quality of our business execution, addressing all the strategic initiatives that we need to do to improve our competitiveness, and also to work better among our business units. As you heard, we had a lot of new products that address more mass-market segments, something that in the past few quarters, we have become less competitive. We think that that has been a significant contributor to our growth. The team is also taking new initiatives in e-commerce. As I mentioned early on, our colleagues at Tokopedia are now working very closely with our core merchants to work together to offer better, to offer better deals to our customers. That's, we've seen very positive results.
The momentum continues in October, with bill numbers across our two business units to improve. In GTF, they have become the, you know, GoPay, the NPL has become the biggest, the NPL provider in Tokopedia. Loan book is increasing at a very healthy rate, and we are introducing cash loans in both ODS and in Tokopedia. The cooperation is working a lot better. Now with GoTo Passport, we have a much better tool to be able to harness the synergy among business groups. You know, I would say that I'm quite, quite optimistic that if we continue to execute this way, we should be able to maintain or increase our market share... and then... T here's a question about ODS overseas. So maybe Catherine, you want to—you may want to address that.
Sure. Thanks a lot for the question, Ryan. So very quickly, both Singapore and Vietnam business of our half turn contribution margin positive as well. So we will continue to exercise prudent growth, sustainable growth, as we see appropriate for this to market. Hopefully, that answers your question. Thank you.
Thanks, Ryan. The next question comes from the line of Henry Wibowo from JP Morgan. Henry, your line is now open.
Thanks, Reggy. Thanks, Patrick, Jacky, for the presentation. I have two questions from my side. Firstly, what do you think is the impact from the new regulation, Permendag number 31/2023, and especially with the recent, I think, shutdown of TikTok Shop, how do you see the impact to particularly Tokopedia? Secondly, still related to that topic within e-commerce, if you can maybe do a deep dive, kind of, a commentary. So I think there are a few segments in Tokopedia, right? The home and appliances, electronic, fashion. As we understand, I think fashion is a bit small, I think about 10% of total GMV. What is the strategy for fashion category going forward? Because it seems like fashion relates to live shopping.
This could basically have a bigger take rate in the future, but competition is definitely the toughest. So, was wondering what's your take on this? Thank you.
Henry, thank you. Good questions. I will pass it on to my colleague, Melissa, to answer your questions.
Hi, Henry. Thanks for the question. So, to answer your first question, which is in regards to, Permendag impacting us, and second, have we seen competition rationalizing post shutdown of TikTok Shop? First of all, the Permendag 31/2023 does not actually have any negative impact on Tokopedia, because, as of today, we also do not serve any cross-border e-commerce business nor, social commerce. So, this regulation do not have, any impact, on Tokopedia, thus far. And in regards to how we've been seeing, rationalization, quarter four has always typically been, one of the most awaited shopping season by our consumers.
So usually this is the time where consumer spends a lot to prepare for their holidays or pretty much all the festive season that is happening. And with that, we also seen competition pretty much competing as aggressively to appeal to these consumers during this season. So we have not seen competition very much subsided, but it is also mainly driven through the seasonality within Q4 itself, which normally is a much more so a shopping season across the globe and not just Indonesia. And in response to your second question, I'll let Jackie actually take that.
Yeah. So, I think, Henry, on your questions regarding our strategy on fashion, so I think it goes back to the strategy Patrick mentioned earlier, right? I mean, we are trying to expand our addressable market and our category selections. So and, we talk about making investment to improve the assortment on our platform, overall discovery, like, the channels on our platform to enhance user experience. So all this naturally will help, like, drive growth in different categories. Yeah, so fashion and beauty will be one of the categories that will be coming from that overall strategy. Yeah, so... And that goes back to our answer earlier regarding how to increase the take rate.
So not only advertising, but I think also, like, all these different categories, lower AOV, but higher take rate, that will be part of the strategy.
I think if I may, I would like to add, Henry, as I mentioned early on, we see the GTV growth momentum continues in October, and we also see improved take rate and profitability in our e-commerce business. And this is also helped by different category mix in our business, more moving geared toward higher products with higher take rate. But having said that, I think you are right that in fashion our platform still has a long way to go. This will require time and investment. This is not something that will happen overnight, and we are also being very cautious because we first need to build our talent pool and expertise before we go big, we go big in this, in this area.
Thanks, Henry. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong, of Jefferies. Thomas, your line is now open.
Hi, good evening. Thanks, management, for taking my questions. I think my first question is related to our AI investment. Given that, it's very personalized and improves the ROI, just want to get some color with regard to your thoughts about the investment spending. So it can be quite big, if we are really dedicated to it.
My second question is about the live streaming side. Given that we have been doing some experiments on live streaming, and if we're looking into different market, how should we think about the GMV contribution from live streaming in the long term? That also comes to my third question, which is about our long-term margin outlook, if any. My final question is about the user side. Can management comment about how we should think about the transacting users coming into Q4 and next year? Thank you.
Thomas, thank you for your question. I think there are four parts of your question. The first one is about AI investment, second one about live streaming, third question about long-term margin, and then, the fourth one is about growth of users growth on our platform. Let me first address the first question. I think AI means different things. When it comes to, like, the underlying utilization of AI in on our platform, we have been investing that for a long time, but it's not something that our users can see directly and feel directly. But when it comes to things like machine learnings and whatnot, this is an area that we have been investing heavily for many years.
If we are talking about generative AI, the way that people recently have experienced, it is also something that we at GoTo, especially Tokopedia, is actually at this moment already has a live product, but it is still still on the limited users for us to make sure that we can offer a good experience for our customers, and also we can control the costs. You are right that the the investment or the cost can be quite high, so we are still, we are still experimenting with that. But in term of capability, we believe that we already have that, and we will continue to improve on it.
In terms of live streaming, I would make one comment, and I will let Melissa comment on it. I think we will continue to be an e-commerce platform, where people come with an intention to purchase. We are not coming from a platform with a DNA of content creation or live streaming, if you will. So we have a lot of things to catch up, to be able to offer a similar or close to similar experience for people who are more accustomed to this type of experience on different platforms.
We feel that the marginal return on investments that we can get are better in improving our core products, as what we have discussed, in offering more affordable products offering to a larger audience, to making sure that we improve our advertising engines and drive monetization, and so forth. We feel that those are the key areas that we should be focusing on. But we are open to work with partners who understand this area better, and hence, that's the reason why we are working with partners like Meta or Instagram in doing live streaming. Melissa, do you want to add to that?
Yeah. So, let me also add parts of live streaming. So we've actually seen live streaming as more so a tool or so-called a feature for merchants to actually share and share story about their own product, and at the same time, being able to to describe their products better. So live streaming has always been pretty much a very effective tool to be able to drive more so impulsive behavior, discovery, as well as review. And with that said, it is like what Patrick had mentioned, it is a tool that we actually look to collaborate with others. And at this level, we do see that us focusing on the core experience within commerce will actually be very key.
And at the same time, being able to actually do much better in terms of improving experience to search, to discover, to browse, through live streaming, would also be key for brands and for any, shops to be able to, share their products in a much more creative way. So, we actually do see this feature picking up and doing pretty well also in Tokopedia, and this will also continue to be a feature, that will be used by brands to actually, describe their, their story much better.
I think on the second question about long-term margin, I will hand it over to Jacky.
Yeah, Thomas, as you know, we actually do not provide, like, specific guidance on the long-term margin or steady-state margin, but, I, I think given the structure of our business, it's not very different from our global peers. So I, I think at the steady state, it should be, at least at the level of our peers. But, keep in mind, we have the, a very comprehensive ecosystems, so that's a lot of synergistic value we can extract from that ecosystem, so that's a advantage for our business. And I think on your last questions on ATU or transacting users, as you know, we shared before, like, we have been focusing on, optimizing our incentive spend. So, we have been shifting away from the less profitable users.
So in the last few quarters, we have seen, like, the unprofitable users kind of churn from our ecosystem, so the, like, ATU numbers continue to decline. But if you look at this quarter, compared to last quarter, it's kind of stabilized. So it went from 53 million to about 52 million. But also, we didn't share the MTU numbers, but actually in Q3, the MTU numbers went up. So this goes back to our overall strategy to expand the total addressable market, tap into, like, the budget users. So always, the ATU will trail a little bit on the MTU, but given Q3, we already see the MTU going up, so we expect the ATU will naturally come...
Yeah. I think I would like to add that users' growth is an area of focus for us, and this is the reason why I stress that we have to maintain tactical flexibility in fourth quarter, to make sure that our users' number continues to grow. You know, we experienced decline in the past, and we feel that we need to address this. But we are addressing this with discipline and with caution. And we have a comprehensive plan to address our users' growth.
Thank you, Thomas. With that, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and we conclude today.