Whenever Indonesian entrepreneur Lilis visited her in-laws, she loved snacking on their homemade crispy simping crackers, made from rice and tapioca flour and infused with aromatic ginger. She badgered her husband to get the recipe so she could make them back in her West Java village.

Through trial and error, she finally cracked the perfect formula and began selling simping in 2002 at kiosks around Bojong Barat, her village in Purwakarta, about 75 miles southeast of Jakarta. But while bags of the savory snacks flew off the shelves, she wasn’t earning enough to support her family.

So, like millions of Indonesian women, in 2010 she took a job abroad, working as a cook to save enough to build a house for her family — and putting her business on ice until she returned home six years later.

Back in Bojong Barat, she felt hamstrung. She knew she needed to borrow money to invest and grow the business but worried that the house she had worked so hard to build would be in jeopardy if she failed to meet loan repayments.

The turning point came last year when she ran into her neighbor, Fatimah, a facilitator for Mastercard Strive in Indonesia, which aims to help 300,000 entrepreneurs to harness the power of the digital economy.

Many of the 66 million small businesses scattered across Indonesia’s islands struggle to find the support they need to strengthen their digital and financial skills and access capital. In fact, 73% of Indonesia’s small business owners did not tap into loans or digital and 63% of them did not access any business support services, according to to a 2025 report published by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which launched the program in the southeast Asian nation in 2023.

That’s why the Mastercard Strive Indonesia program, which includes the Indonesian National Council for Financial Inclusion and Mercy Corps Indonesia, is linking rural Java entrepreneurs with local mentors like Fatimah who talk to them face-to-face and quickly assess their challenges.

“Small businesses that receive mentoring early on tend to have a higher chance of surviving and growing,” says Ani Winarti, Mercy Corps’ East Java-based senior training and mentoring officer. “They often see better revenue and are more prepared to face challenges.”

Fatimah offered to help Lilis open a bank account in her name and apply for a loan. She  could see that her neighbor’s snack business had potential but knew that Lilis had spent years caring for her sick daughter and been left disappointed by people who had previously promised to help her get a loan.

Determined to earn Lilis’ trust, Fatimah began helping her collect the documents she needed to open a bank account and showed her how to increase sales by letting customers pay using QR codes instead of just cash.

“I want to share my knowledge to learn and grow together with women entrepreneurs to help them achieve their goals in developing their business and of course improve their personal abilities,” Fatimah says.

Initially skeptical, Lilis started learning about savings, credit and cybersecurity through the online Micromentor business mentoring platform, adapted from one developed by  Mercy Corps. It soon gave her the confidence to take out a loan of 20 million rupiahs ($1,230) to upgrade her kitchen. 

Today her business, which employs five people including her daughter and her niece, accepts digital payments, and Lilis has her heart set on opening a shop to sell simping and cakes as the business grows.

“Now I can save and manage my money well,” she says. “Moreover, I can use the loan to fix my production space. Now making simping is easier, it saves time and improves quality.”

Mercy Corps facilitators teach small groups of entrepreneurs digital marketing basics,  from taking product photos to setting up online stores and selling through channels such as WhatsApp. It shows them how to introduce digital payments and apply for credit and insurance.

Making sure women entrepreneurs like Lilis are at the center of the program is critical to helping them access the digital skills and resources they need to become financially resilient, create jobs and support families.

“The impact goes beyond just numbers. It creates real opportunities for our female participants to build confidence and strengthen their entrepreneurial mindset,” Winarti says. “They’re leading, innovating and transforming societies.”