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ublicly listed Bank OCBC NISP, part of Singaporean lender OCBC Bank, is cooperating with private lender Bank Central Asia (BCA) to provide OCBC'€™s customers with greater ease of doing transactions using BCA'€™s existing Flazz electronic money system.

BCA, known to have an extensive network of domestic retail customers, will allow its 70,000-merchant network to be shared with OCBC customers without having to open a BCA bank account.

'€œIt takes time to establish a new system. BCA has fully operated their system in big cities so we choose to use their system,'€ OCBC senior corporate executive Ka Jit said on Thursday. The bank is still finalizing the permit with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) to launch the service officially.

BCA senior general manager Santoso said that OCBC was the first commercial bank to use its e-money system. BCA has only cooperated with a number of regional banks, such as Jakarta'€™s Bank DKI, Yogyakarta'€™s Bank DIY and East Java'€™s Bank Jatim.

He hoped more commercial banks would follow suit so as to support the central bank'€™s vision of a '€œcashless society'€ as this cooperation was expected to broaden the practice of non-cash transactions.

OCBC consumer banking director Andrae Krishnawan said that OCBC decided to introduce the new transaction platform after learning that e-money had started to get public attention, thanks in part to Bank Indonesia'€™s (BI) initiative of the National Non-Cash Movement (GNNT). '€œI am sure e-money will become more popular in the future,'€ he said. /saf