Jakarta – The government must stand its ground in negotiations with the United States, which is complaining about our digital payment systems, namely the Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS) and the National Payment Gateway (GPN). Aside from these protests being groundless, Indonesia has full sovereignty to regulate its digital payment systems for the domestic market.

In his new policy of tariffs with trading partners, US President Donald Trump has highlighted QRIS and the GPN. A document released by the United States Trade Representative in March 2025 takes issue with the Bank Indonesia regulation that restricts foreign ownership of switching companies to a maximum of 20 percent. Meanwhile, the Bank Indonesia regulation on the implementation of QRIS is under the spotlight because there is no foreign involvement.

These protests are clearly a contrivance and are closely linked to the business interests of the American companies that have long managed Mastercard and Visa, the two main global payment networks that process credit card, debit card, and pre-payment card transactions.

And in 2019, Mastercard and Visa both complained about the Bank Indonesia regulation on the GPN. They even delayed their registration as principal licensees, companies that issue licenses to financial institutions that issue credit cards, in Indonesia.

The existence of business interests behind these protests is becoming increasingly clear because QRIS and the GPN are seeing strong growth, and Mastercard and Visa, which have operated in Indonesia since 1980, are worried that their business will be eroded. In 2024, transactions using QRIS were worth Rp659.93 trillion, an 80-fold increase over the value in 2020, the year the system was introduced, when they stood at Rp8.21 trillion. In 2020, there were 124.11 million QRIS transactions, a figure that surged 50-fold to 6.24 billion transactions four years later.

Conversely, although Visa and Mastercard are still the market leaders, their transaction volumes have been in decline since 2014. According to data from Statista, Visa's market share fell from 57.7 percent in 2014 to 38.7 percent in 2022, while Mastercard's share shrunk from 26.3 percent in 2014 to 24 percent in 2022. However, in 2023, both Visa and Mastercard still recorded transaction volumes in Indonesia worth US$76.12 billion and US$72.6 billion, respectively.

But this is not simply a matter of economic calculations. Far more importantly, the GPN and QRIS are a manifestation of sovereignty over our national payment systems. Areas of economic sovereignty such as regulating the use of our rupiah currency cannot be subject to intervention or control by other nations, including the United States under the leadership of Donald Trump.

The use of the GPN and QRIS means that domestic transactions no longer need to use payment gateways or settlements in far-off countries. And these two payment systems bring many benefits to everyone living in Indonesia. Merchants, banks and other financial institutions, and also customers, do not have to pay the costs of investment or maintenance, or high transaction fees.

So, given the interests involved and the significant benefits, there is no need for President Subianto's aides, who will negotiate with the US, to concede any revisions to the national payment systems. If the government comes off second best in these negotiations, the government could become known as a lackey of the Americans.

– Read the complete story in Tempo English Magazine

Source: https://en.tempo.co/read/2004672/digital-payment-systems-sovereignt