December 10, 2025 | 03:00 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Arfah Putri had worked only two months and had not yet become a full-time employee when she first tried borrowing money through a digital lending app about two years ago. “I used it to go on a trip to Bali with friends after graduation,” she told Tempo on Thursday, December 4, 2025.
The young woman from Semarang, Central Java, had been tempted by an online advertisement offering discounted airfares, even though payday was still weeks away. “I didn’t want to miss that promotion,” she said. Without thinking twice, she applied for a loan on a financial-technology platform. The process was quick and easy. By simply uploading a photo of herself and her identity card, she received the funds the same day.
From that moment, Arfah was hooked. She borrowed repeatedly through online lending, known locally as pinjol, sometimes from three to six financing platforms at once. She spent the money on consumer whims, such as shopping, dining out, traveling, even attending concerts.
Before long, the debt piled up. Her monthly installments outstripped her salary. Month after month, Arfah lived by borrowing to pay off previous loans, digging herself into an even deeper hole. “Every payday, my money goes straight to paying pinjol,” she said.
From an initial Rp 1 million (about US$60) loan, her total debt—including interest and penalties—has now ballooned into the tens of millions of rupiah across multiple platforms. She once fell behind on payments and received a barrage of text messages and calls from debt collectors.
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