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tate lender Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) is looking to expand the use of its new mobile payment platform, known as m-POS, entering the retail sector as part of the bank'€™s program to boost non-interest income.

BNI card business division head Corina Lelyla Carnelis said on Tuesday that the bank expected the new platform would increase the bank'€™s transaction volume through electronic data capture (EDC) by 20 percent in two years from the current monthly average of Rp 3.2 trillion (US$224.85 million).

'€œThe transactions should increase as we venture into retail. At present, 80 percent of transactions through its EDC come from retail, such as groceries,'€ Corina said after the announcement of the bank'€™s partnership with restaurant chain Boga Group, which agreed to become the first retailer to use BNI'€™s mobile payment platform, called mobile point of sales (m-POS).

M-POS, which is operated in partnership with MasterCard, is part of the EDC payment system. It makes debit or credit card transactions easier, as customers need only attach a dongle to their mobile phones as the card reader. The consumer is required only to download the BNI m-POS app to a mobile device.

The dongle will function similarly to an EDC and is able to read data stored on both debit and credit cards.

Corina said that m-POS currently contributed Rp 4 billion monthly to the bank'€™s total EDC transactions, mostly from insurance companies'€™ agents operating the platform for various client payments.

The bank'€™s fee-based income increased 2 percent to Rp 4.3 trillion in the first half of the year from Rp 4.2 trillion in the same period last year, according to its financial report.

The new payment platform was first launched in 2013 in cooperation with Swiff technology and Indopay as the provider of the technology, with insurance companies the main users; nine insurance companies have signed up to the service to date.

With the expansion in the retail sector, BNI is looking to operate 700 dongles by the end of the year, up from the current 400 dongles.

Under the partnership signed on Tuesday, the mobile payment platform will be available in seven branches of Bakerzin restaurant, which is run by Boga Group, around Greater Jakarta.

Boga Group president director Kusnadi Rahardja said that the service would soon be expanded to other restaurants under Boga Group, such as Pepper Lunch'€™s 70 branches. '€œWe will provide three dongles for each branch of Bakerzin,'€ Kusnadi said.

As part of the cooperation, Boga Group also launched its new Boga Privilege Card, which will be specially given to Mastercard credit card holders. The holders of the privilege card will be entitled to special benefits from the restaurant chain.

Apart from the insurance and big retail business, in the future, BNI aims to target the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector for its mobile payment platform, operational costs of which are cheaper than EDCs.

'€œLike in foreign countries, the platform is used at night markets. We want to look into SMEs,'€ Corina said. (fsu)