CIMB Niaga Gets Blessing, Escorts WeChat Pay to Enter Indonesia

The payment application from China WeChat Pay received the blessing of Bank Indonesia to operate, which was escorted by Bank CIMB Niaga as a bank acquirer. This news was directly confirmed by the Deputy Governor of Bank Indonesia Sugeng last week (11/1).

"Alhamdulillah WeChat Pay has complied, now I have given them QRIS permission. So it's been done, where before there was no legal umbrella, now there is a legal umbrella regarding QRIS. They have to obey," said Sugeng as quoted from Seconds.

WeChat Pay as a foreign payment service provider (PJSP), must meet the requirements. That they must cooperate with Book IV to enter as a domestic PJSP.

Confirmed directly to DailySocialCIMB Niaga's Director of Consumer Business Lani Darmawan explained that the company is collaborating with WeChat Pay to accept payments and transactions using the WeChat Pay application at CIMB Niaga's QRIS and EDC merchants.

"This is to facilitate the activities of foreign tourists using WeChat Pay in Indonesia, so we hope that it can stimulate Indonesian tourism more because of the ease of tourist transactions in Indonesia," said Lani.

The company hopes to pocket more CASA sources (current accounts and saving accounts) aka cheap funds that can be obtained. The products of CASA itself are savings and current accounts.

After receiving the approval of BI, the company will expand the number of merchants in tourist locations visited by many Chinese tourists. Besides Bali, the tourism potentials that they visit a lot are Batam and Manado.

Previously, the company did piloting at a number of tourist points in Bali has been going on for more than a year. Unfortunately, Lani is reluctant to describe the level of the transaction. "It's very small [transactions] due to limited [merchant locations]," he added.

He confessed, during that time piloting relatively smoothly and without a hitch.

Not only with CIMB Niaga, actually WeChat too cooperating with BCA sebagai acquirer. But have not found a bright spot.

WeChat's closest competitor, Alipay, is said to be in the process of being approved for official entry. Deputy Director of the BI Payment System Policy Department (DKSP) Ricky Satria explained that the approval process involved a fairly complicated contract because it involved both parties.

According to him, not only the two big players who plan to enter Indonesia, there are many more Foreign PJSP which is likely to enter. This is because Indonesia benefits because it can find out how many tourists are shopping in the country thanks to the presence of QRIS.

"Right now (tourists shopping) are not recorded. But if through QRIS it is recorded how many tourist friends shop through QRIS," said Ricky.