Anastasya Lavenia Y, Jakarta – Indonesian Minister of Migrant Worker Protection, Abdul Kadir Karding, announced that remittances, or cross-border money transfers, from Indonesian migrant workers reached Rp253.3 trillion in 2024. This total was generated by 297,000 Indonesian migrant workers employed abroad.
"The largest contributing region is East Java, which indeed has the highest number of migrant workers," said Abdul during a Financial Education event for Indonesian Migrant Workers at the Dhanapala Building in Jakarta on Monday, April 21, 2025. Besides East Java, other major contributing regions include West Java, Central Java, and West Nusa Tenggara.
While exact figures for 2025 are not yet available, Abdul projected that remittances would increase proportionally with the number of Indonesian Migrant Workers employed overseas. He claimed that if 425,000 workers were placed abroad, remittances could potentially reach Rp433.6 trillion.
During the same event, Bank Indonesia's Senior Deputy Governor, Destry Damayanti, highlighted several payment systems that migrant workers could utilize for cross-border transactions. The first is the Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS), which is usable in several countries.
"We already have partnerships with Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. We are also in the process of establishing partnerships with South Korea, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia," Destry explained.
Furthermore, Destry said that Bank Indonesia, in collaboration with the Financial Services Authority (OJK), is also providing opportunities for banking institutions to offer multi-currency wallets. This would allow migrant workers receiving salaries in foreign currencies to have those funds directly transferred to their rupiah accounts.