Indonesian micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) account for 20.5 million of the total users.
“The digital world is our present and future era. Our younger generation is getting used to digitalization," BI Governor Perry Warjiyo noted at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Java Sharia Economic Festival (FESyar), which was followed online from Jakarta on Thursday.
QRIS and BI-FAST services are now available in Thailand, he said. Therefore, Indonesians visiting Thailand can use them for making payments.
In addition, a trial of QRIS and BI-FAST cooperation is also being conducted in Malaysia. Warjiyo said he hopes that the two payment systems will connect the two neighboring countries.
Further, QRIS and BI-FAST will be made available in Singapore by 2024 and the Philippines by 2025. Thus, the two services will become available in five ASEAN countries overall.
In addition to QRIS and BI-FAST, the local currency settlement (LCS) cooperation will also apply in these countries, Warjiyo disclosed.
"In the future, people will not need to change from rupiah to US dollars, then US dollars to Thai baht for payment. People can go directly (and) pay from Indonesian rupiah to Thai baht, Malaysian ringgit, and Singapore dollar in just seconds," he informed.
Besides conventional businesses, Islamic boarding schools have also become hubs of digitalization development, through the adoption of services such as QRIS and BI-FAST, to widen their position as centers of the Islamic financial economy.
Warjiyo said that massive digitization in Islamic boarding schools is mainly being carried out for payments of sales transactions for MSME products, zakat, infaq (alms), and others using QRIS and BI-FAST.
"Let us continue to digitize our Islamic boarding schools, the Islamic financial economy in Java, East Java, and then we connect them to the world," he added.
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Translator: Agatha Olivia V, Resinta S
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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