Indonesia launched its first real-time payments system BI-FAST — owned and regulated by Bank Indonesia — in December 2021. As a late entrant, it learned from other countries’ real-time journeys and, with ACI’s support, was live in a record less than nine months.
Indonesia’s BI-FAST is one of the world’s largest and most modernized real-time payments initiatives. It incorporates 135 banks, multi-tenant aggregators and non-bank participants. With no legacy burden to overcome, it has leapfrogged to ISO 20022, creating a diverse, universally reachable real-time ecosystem that accelerates widescale adoption.
Indonesia is now ranked as #8 in the world’s top 10 fastest-growing real-time payment markets, with almost 2 billion real-time payment transactions in 2023, and a CAGR of 44.6% (2023-2028). The country has also sprinted ahead of more mature neighbors to become #3 in Asia Pacific for real-time payments volume, share and growth. By 2028, it is expected that real-time payments will account for 13.1% of all transactions in Indonesia.
Indonesia
Real-time transactions
2023 Real-time share of electronic payments
11%
2028f
12.2B
2023-2028 CAGR
44.6%
Scheme messaging
ISO 20022
Real-time payments scheme
BI-FAST
2021
Scaling up for wider inclusion and expansion
Although Indonesia is classed by the World Bank as an upper-middle-income country, 100 million Indonesians remain unbanked. Ongoing financial inclusion initiatives continue to center around BI-FAST, which offers citizens and merchants low-cost entry to digital and mobile payments.
Indonesia has a population of 270 million, making it the largest country in Southeast Asia. Meeting the real-time payment needs of so many consumers calls for huge processing capacity — to achieve this, the Bank Indonesia is expanding the ecosystem to include multi-tenant aggregators from leading national switches, such as Rintis Sejahtera, Artajasa and Alto Network. Their participation — and ability to connect banks and non-bank participants to the central infrastructure — will be vital to support growth at scale as the market matures.
As Indonesia gradually opens its real-time payment platform to fintechs, expect partnerships between banks and fintechs to accelerate real-time payments services and overlays, making real-time payments even more pervasive.
CustomersPartners
