T

he country'€™s largest private lender, Bank Central Asia (BCA), expects online shopping transactions using its debit and credit cards to nearly double next year as e-commerce gains popularity, an executive says.

BCA consumer card head Santoso predicted the bank'€™s online transactions to grow within a range of 50 to 80 percent in 2016 compared to last year after seeing growth nearly double in the January-September period of this year.

As of September, the lender booked Rp 4.5 trillion (US$326.3 million) in e-commerce transactions, more than a third of which, Rp 1.7 trillion, came from debit cards, Santoso said.

He expected overall e-commerce transactions to reach Rp 5 trillion by year-end, compared to Rp 2.2 trillion by the end of last year.

'€œLooking at the acceleration, we can expect at least double-digit growth in the future,'€ he said during a promotional event in Jakarta on Monday.

The rapid growth of e-commerce transactions in the past few years was triggered by the country'€™s high internet usage, with user numbers growing 23.6 percent on average each year to 88.1 million users as of last year, from 16 million in 2005, according to Santoso.

'€œThe real sector also saw rising costs, which decreased sales in physical commerce, such as retail, hypermarket and wholesale sellers. The situation triggered small vendors to enter e-commerce as the government also supported the efforts,'€ he explained.

To boost transaction growth next year, BCA has launched a promotional program called '€œe-Shopping Carnival 2015'€, which will run from Dec. 8 to 10 with 16 e-commerce merchants, including blanja.com, alfaonline.com, tiket.com and blibli.com.

The program, which offers discounts and benefits to BCA customers, enables customers of other cardholders of global credit card principals '€” also known as acquiring companies '€” such as Visa, MasterCard, JCB and American Express.

Aside of that, Santoso said the bank'€™s e-commerce transaction growth would also be supported by the bank'€™s effort to add around 100 to 150 merchants next year from 420 partners currently, including hotels, travel and electronics companies.

He further said that the bank would also launch a new initiative to grab the massive online shopping transaction phenomenon with social media platforms, which often had smaller transaction values and relied on traditional payment methods, such as cash-on-delivery (COD) and ATM transfer.

Indonesian E-commerce Association (IdEA) chairman Daniel Tumiwa welcomes BCA'€™s initiative to spur growth in the domestic e-commerce industry, saying that '€œthe government, banks and all e-commerce players are moving together with good coordination, so that we can improve and evaluate the industry.'€