Four big banks support Bank Indonesia’s National Payment Gateway

In order to support Bank Indonesia’s (BI) plan for an integrated payment system called National Payment Gateway (NPG), four banks inked an agreement on interoperability and interconnectivity of debit cards and electronic money on Wednesday.

The agreement was signed by state-owned lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Mandiri, Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) and the country’s largest private lender Bank Central Asia (BCA) that act as acquirers and represent 75 percent of debit transactions in the country.

Besides the four banks, three switching companies, namely Artajasa Pembayaran Elektronis, Rintis Sejahtera and Alto Network also support BI’s plan to implement NPG.

“NPG is expected to solve problems and increase efficiency of Indonesia’s payment system nowadays. Currently, the payment system infrastructure is deemed inefficient due to limitation of interoperability and interconnectivity between principals,” BI executive director of communications Tirta Segara said in a press statement.

NPG is a system that processes payment transactions electronically through a variety of instruments, such as ATM cards, electronic money and credit cards. With NPG, people are able to carry out non-cash transactions from any bank in the country, using any kind of instrument or channel.