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ocal banks say that their information technology (IT) systems are ready to implement branchless banking by 2013, although they are waiting for the central bank to issue a needed regulation on providing banking services outside traditional branches.

Bank Indonesia (BI) has been pushing programs that promote financial inclusion to solve a perennial problem of providing formal financial services to people living in remote and under-served areas of the archipelago.

BI Governor Darmin Nasution said last week that the central bank would issue branchless banking guidelines early next year, as quoted by Antara news wire.

According to the 2012 World Bank Global Financial Inclusion Study, only 20 percent of Indonesians aged 15 or above had savings accounts in formal financial institutions, while only 9 percent reported visiting banks or other official financial institutions to obtain loans.

Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Bank Mandiri’s managing director for micro and retail banking, said that banks should piggyback on mobile phone operators, given that around 200 million Indonesians had access to mobile phones.

State-owned Bank Mandiri, the nation’s largest lender by assets, launched a subsidiary, Bank Sinar Harapan Bali, earlier this year that became the first bank in the nation to implement branchless banking by allowing people to conduct transactions using mobile phones.

Budi said that the bank’s IT infrastructure was ready to accommodate branchless banking on a wide scale, including money transfers by mobile phones.

Publicly listed Bank Rakyat Indonesian (BRI), the nation’s most profitable bank, also has plans to introduce branchless banking in the immediate future, BRI finance director Ahmad Baiquni said.

“We will launch a product related to branchless banking within a short time,” Ahmad said, adding that the product would include mobile and Internet banking services.

While BRI’s IT systems were up to the challenge, Ahmad said that the bank faced challenges in collaborating with local banking agents so that customers could set up bank accounts. “Bank Indonesia wants these banking agents to be legal business entities,” he said.

In responding to the government’s financial inclusion plans, banks have said that they will have to offer a host of services, including mobile banking, to allow potential customers to open bank accounts via local banking agents.

Budi said that post offices, minimarkets and phone voucher sellers, all of which are present in large numbers throughout the nation, could act on behalf of the banks under certain guidelines to open bank accounts.

“Telecommunication operators have more than 300,000 to 400,000 spots at which phone vouchers are sold. Banks want to have access to these spots,” he said.

Budi added that working together with agents would be less expensive than going it on their own for banks, given that banks spend at least Rp 1 billion to establish a single branch office.

However, Budi said that banks had to ensure that mobile phone transactions were secure, such as through the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) standards.

He added that another challenge was educating the public, which has grown accustomed to conducting transactions at traditional branches.