TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Bank Indonesia (BI) is expanding the adoption of the Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS) among small and micro businesses. A centralized approach will be implemented to push for wider coverage of QR code in MSME's payment system, which will eventually increase Indonesia's financial inclusion rate.

"The development of QRIS features require an ecosystem for users and merchants, so that all merchants would all be centralized and have ID numbers," BI's deputy director for payment system policy Ricky Satria said.

The centralized merchant registration approach is expected to expand QRIS coverage for acceptances and interconnections. Regulators will continue to introduce and disseminate the use of QRIS to MSME actors as well as payment system providers.

BI director for consumer business Handayani said that the expansion of QRIS adoption for financial inclusion purposes is done by utilizing a network of 9,000 office branches and more than 420,000 agents.

To date, 16 banks and nine non-bank financial services have been approved to implement QRIS transactions. At the end of January, BI recorded that 2.4 million merchants are registered with QRIS.

TEMPO.CO