TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) lamented the Communication and Informatics Ministry's decision to block a number of sites and apps on July 30, 2022. The blocking of Paypal, in particular, is a major loss for the Indonesian people, it said.

"The ones at a loss are the people of Indonesia, because compared to other global payment systems such as Google Pay and Alipay, the number of Paypal users in Indonesia is quite high," Indef's head of the Center for Innovation and Digital Economy, Nailul Huda, said on Monday, August 1st.

Nailul said that 50 percent of global software transactions use Paypal. If the ministry continues to block Paypal, the public will be very disadvantaged because they cannot use the most popular payment service worldwide.

"Many global financial transaction activities use Paypal for payments. Referring to Statista, many global software payments use Paypal as well, meaning that Paypal has a very high bargaining power," said Nailul.

Blocking PayPal, Nailul argues, makes it very difficult for Indonesians to pay for official apps made by developers. Moreover, none of the global digital payment infrastructure created by Indonesians are ready to take on this service.

"It is unclear what the government is offering. Our e-wallets cannot be used overseas. This means we are being told to go back to using the global interbank transfer service, which is long and inefficient. We are asked to move 3 to 5 steps backwards," Nailul said.

TEMPO

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