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ndonesia’s largest private lender Bank Central Asia (BCA) has cemented its foothold in electronic payment services as it now works with more banks to cobrand its prepaid card, Flazz.

BCA signed on Wednesday a co-branding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bank Pan Indonesia (PaninBank), adding to the list of six banks it already has co-branding agreements with, including private lenders OCBC NISP and Bank Danamon, as well as regional development bank BPD Yogyakarta.

The latest deal will enable BCA and PaninBank to issue Flazz Panin e-payment cards and also allow PaninBank’s customers to transact at more than 80,000 Flazz merchants in 22 cities nationwide, as well as pay public transportation fares using the prepaid card.

Around 90 percent of Flazz card transactions are for transportation, while transactions at merchants account for around 10 percent of total transaction values, BCA president director Jahja Setiaatmadja said during the signing event in Central Jakarta.

As of September, transaction values using the prepaid card reached around Rp 500 billion (US$38.3 million) with around 9.8 million cards having been issued by BCA after partnering with around 70 Flazz issuers such as media giant Kompas Gramedia Group. The lender targets to issue 10.1 million cards by the year’s end.

“This is our homework: how to make prepaid card transactions prestigious,” he said. “As a cash-based society, Indonesia needs to look for an efficiency measure that is also easily used by its people. Cash transactions bear high costs.”

Financial authorities in the country have also campaigned for a “less cash-based society”, hoping to significantly reduce the use of cash and boost electronic transactions with e-money, debit cards and credit cards to reduce costs in the nation’s economy.

Several lenders are also developing their own prepaid cards and services. State-run lender Bank Mandiri, the nation’s largest lender by assets, has issued 8.14 million prepaid cards as of September and has booked almost 265 million transactions worth Rp 2.55 trillion.

PaninBank is also tempted to develop a prepaid card although its president director, Herwidayatmo, admitted that his company was tardy in this innovation compared to its peers.

“We want to provide ease for our customers,” he said on the sidelines of the event. “Besides, banks need to be more efficient in the future. If our cooperation with BCA can achieve that, why not?”

PaninBank has yet to set any target for card issuance numbers as its approval is being processed with the authorities. It targets to start issuing a co-branding prepaid card next year.

At the same event, PaninBank also entered into an agreement with PT Rintis Sejahtera, the operator of the Prima ATM Link, to join the link that administers ATM transfers for banks including BCA.

As of September, PaninBank, which sits among the nation’s top 10 lenders, booked net profits worth Rp 1.79 trillion, a 38.7 percent hike compared to the same period last year. Its loan disbursement reached Rp 131.14 trillion, a 4.73 percent increase year-on-year (yoy).

Meanwhile, BCA recorded 5.8 percent growth in loans to Rp 386.1 trillion as of September yoy. It booked 13.2 percent net profits growth yoy to Rp 15.1 trillion from January to September.