IMPROVING COASTAL COMMUNITIES’ MICRO ENTERPRISES’ KNOWLEDGE CAPABILITIES: BOOSTING FINANCE DIGITALIZATION IN SMALL ISLANDS REGION

Central government effort to push MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) into more digitalise in the hope to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of MSME business processes and operations, may face significant challenge for MSMEs in small islands regions. Access to internet, ICT (information communication technology) capabilities, fintech services penetration are factors that hamper the good intention by government. To help the initiative by government, this study aimed to improve the knowledge capabilities especially in the use of financial technology (fintech) by the coastal communities’ micro enterprises which consist of fishermen and marine farmers in Kei Islands, Indonesia. By doing so, this study performs integration of SWOT analysis and Fuzzy AHP (analytical hierarchy process) to obtain the viable alternative to increase and improve the knowledge capabilities fishermen and marine farmers in the use fintech services to improve their overall managerial performance. This study conducted in-depth interview to three categories of expert’s namely bank and financial senior officer, MSMEs in fisheries, and educators. The result showed that more socialisation either to increase the knowledge on fintech services available, the of ICT and the importance of managing the business properly can improve knowledge capabilities of micro enterprises in coastal area to adopt business digitalisation.