Indonesian Ban Could Kill Nearly One Third of TikTok Shop’s Business

TikTok just cannot escape government scrutiny. Even as the hugely popular ByteDance-owned app expands in the U.S. despite a persistent threat of a ban, the Indonesian government has decided on a new regulation to ban online shopping on social media. That would hobble TikTok’s fast-growing shopping service in Indonesia, which is the single biggest market for TikTok Shop, as the service is known.

Previously unreported data reveal that TikTok Shop was recently on pace to handle more than $6 billion worth of transactions in Indonesia this year, more than a third of the entire Southeast Asian total, which accounts for the vast majority of TikTok Shop’s global business. The crackdown in Indonesia is likely to increase pressure on TikTok Shop’s nascent U.S. expansion. While TikTok Shop is growing rapidly in the U.S., it still trails TikTok’s Southeast Asian business by a wide margin.