For many commuters, accessing inner and outer Jakarta toll roads requires a good deal of effort due to limited payment options along with the decreasing availability of tollbooths for cash payments.

Toll road operator Jasa Marga revealed that currently only 12 percent commuters in greater Jakarta used prepaid cards.

Agustinus Anom Prabowo, for example, said that he had to buy a Bank Mandiri prepaid card, called an e-Money card, at an automated tollbooth (GTO) at the Meruya gate to avoid the long line of vehicles that had flocked to the cash-payment booths.

At that time, according to Anom, cash payment could only be accepted at two of five booths.

'€œAs I was in a rush, I drove my car to the GTO and bought an e-Money card offered by a toll officer for Rp 40,000,'€ he said.

Although he did not intend to buy a prepaid card for accessing toll roads, Anom eventually found that cashless payment with prepaid cards encouraged commuters to be well-organized in terms of estimating budgets spent on commuting through toll roads before topping up the cards.

Moreover, the system enabled faster payment, he added.

In line with Anom, a resident of Cinere, East Jakarta, Chitra Delicia Tjahjono said that prepaid payment eased traffic congestion at the toll gates because with the card, commuters could enter the toll roads more quickly.

However, according to Chitra, the introduction of the cashless payment system through prepaid cards had not been effective because a lot of commuters remained resistant to the system, as attested to by the long lines at the cash payment tollbooths.

'€œBasically, the system itself is a good one, but the dissemination and explanation of the system was not convincing enough,'€ said Chitra, noting that she had previously been unaware that toll operator Jasa Marga had applied such payment system.

Tulus Abadi of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) said that decreasing the number of tollbooths accepting cash payments limited the options of commuters in accessing toll roads.

According to him, the number of commuters using prepaid cards was still lower than those without the cards.

'€œThis [decreasing the number of cash payment toll booths] limits access for the commuters. Jasa Marga should keep open more booths for cash payments,'€ Tulus said.

Tulus furthermore suggested that Jasa Marga should also enable payment with prepaid cards issued by other banks. Currently, most toll gates inside and outside the city can only accept cashless payment from Mandiri prepaid cards.

For example, all of tollbooths at the Semanggi I gate are only open for Mandiri prepaid card users.

Separately, Jasa Marga spokesman Wasta Gunadi said that with GTO, Jasa Marga wanted to encourage more commuters to utilize cashless payments because the government had been enforcing a cashless transaction policy.

'€œAside from that, the system was also an effort to improve our service in providing faster payment,'€ Wasta added.

In regard to GTO, which mostly only accepted Bank Mandiri prepaid cards, Wasta said that Bank Mandiri was in charge of the policy applied at a GTO because the state-owned lender had won the contract for the e-toll system until 2018.

'€œWhether other banks can also have access to GTO is decided by Bank Mandiri as the tender winner,'€ Wasta added.

Meanwhile, Bank Mandiri corporation communication head Ahmad Reza said that commuters in Greater Jakarta would have more options to access toll roads in Jakarta as a number of state-owned banks were set to join Bank Mandiri in providing cashless payment services.

However, Bank Mandiri would initially team up with state-owned banks, such as Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) and Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), according to Reza.

'€œBank Mandiri will work with other banks to provide prepaid cards for toll payments. In the initial phase, we will connect to state-owned banks,'€ said Reza.

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