Bank Indonesia warned payment providers on October 21 that they could lose their licenses for facilitating illegal transactions through QRIS, the national QR payment system. The central bank explicitly named online gambling among such operations. Deputy Governor Filianingsih Hendarta made the statement at a press conference in Jakarta after a board of governors meeting.
The central bank outlined four areas of tighter oversight. Payment service providers and merchant aggregators must apply KYC checks when onboarding merchants. Suspicious transactions will be monitored by amount, timing and frequency, as well as against blacklists of merchants. A provider found servicing illegal transactions may face restrictions on its activities, suspension or license revocation. The regulator will oversee QRIS jointly with relevant agencies and law enforcement.
Hendarta gave an example: a street vendor's point of sale was closed, yet payments in identical amounts kept arriving in its account around midnight. According to her, such transactions require review because they do not match the normal operations of the business. Merchants must also be checked after they are onboarded.
The bank did not introduce any new bans on using QRIS. It did not name the companies that face license revocation, and no actual revocations were reported at the press conference. The date from which the tougher controls will apply was not specified.
For operators and payment teams working with traffic from Indonesia, merchant checks and monitoring of anomalous payment patterns will now run through providers. If measures follow against specific companies, they will be the first real test of how serious this threat is.
