State-owned lender Bank Mandiri (BMRI) is upbeat about its credit card business in the second half as it eyes the higher number of Indonesians traveling to Singapore.

Mandiri consumer banking director Hery Gunardi said on Wednesday the lender expected to post around 23 to 27 percent growth in credit card business in 2015.

The target will bring the overall loans to at least Rp 10.19 trillion (US$754.18 million), up from Rp 8.29 trillion in 2014.

'€œWe already reaped more than half of this year'€™s target within the first six months and expect to book the rest in the remaining six months,'€ he said.

At present, Mandiri has 3.82 million circulating credit cards and aims to have more than 4 million cards by year-end.

According to its first-half financial report, Mandiri'€™s outstanding credit card loans already amounted to Rp 8.75 trillion in June, equal to more than 85 percent of the full-year target.

Hery said that some of the credit card transactions were booked offshore, with Singapore topping the list of foreign destinations, followed by Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, France and other European countries.

'€œLast year, transactions booked in Singapore accounted for 15 percent of total number of face-to-face cross-border transactions and 23 percent in terms of total value of the same face-to-face cross-border transactions,'€ he said after signing a credit card partnership agreement with Singapore'€™s integrated resort, Marina Bay Sands.

Such face-to-face cross-border transactions mean that a credit card holder is physically present in a foreign country and that the transaction is recorded using an electronic data capture (EDC) unit, thus excluding online credit card transactions.

In 2015, Mandiri hopes to see a 25 to 30 percent increase in the transactions that are booked in Singapore, maintaining its conviction that the city-state will remain the most preferred foreign destination for Indonesians.

As many as 3.02 million Indonesians traveled to Singapore last year and 1.08 million Indonesians already made the trip to the city-state in the period from January to May 2015, according to data from the Singapore Tourism Board.

December has traditionally been one of the peak months throughout the year and Mandiri is anticipating the same trend to continue in 2015 to propel its credit card business.

'€œIt will also help drive the contribution of credit cards to our overall fee-based income. We want to see fee-based income from credit card grow at a range of 28 percent to 30 percent this year from the previous,'€ Hery said.

By targeting an annual growth rate of 28 to 30 percent, Mandiri expects to see fee-related income from the credit card segment to touch Rp 1.83 trillion to Rp 1.85 trillion.

Midway through the year, the segment has already generated Rp 780 billion in income.

Meanwhile, Marina Bay Sands senior vice president for marketing Maunik Thacker acknowledged that Indonesian tourists were among the resort'€™s top five customers, besides those hailing from China, Malaysia, Japan and Singapore.

Popular

Kadin urges stability after Constitutional Court ruling

Jokowi says transition to new government to begi

BCA loan disbursement surges 17.1 percent yoy in first quarter