BI Publishhe E-money

BI Publishes E-Money Development Study
The soaring popularity of non-cash payment instruments such as prepaid cards, commonly referred to as electronic money (e-money), has led Bank Indonesia (BI), the national payment system operator, to take various actions in anticipation of this trend. One move has been to launch the 2006 initiative on the less cash society, which resulted in the production of several working papers.

The goal of this initiative is to promote the creation of a secure, efficient and reliable e-money instrument for the public. A further objective is the building of a more efficient national economy. E-money is envisaged as filling an important gap in the existing array of non-cash payment instruments, ranging from low value/retail instruments such as cheques, bilyet giro, credit cards and so on to high value instruments such as transactions generated by the interbank money market and processed through the BI-Real Time Gross Settlement system (BI-RTGS).

BI sees e-money as a highly suitable instrument for micropayments involving small, but very frequent transactions. In publishing the study of this initiative, BI also invites responses and suggestions for improvements to a paper on the issue and/or amendment of regulations governing e-money.

Public comment is also invited for other working papers produced during the “less cash society" initiative of 2006.