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ver the optimistic one, e-commerce platform Bukalapak expects to see a 150 percent spike in the value of the online transactions of its users during the upcoming annual national online shopping day (Harbolnas).

Bukalapak is one of the Indonesian e-commerce giants like Lazada, Zalora, Traveloka, ShopBack and Elevenia that will participate in the event. Running from Dec. 12 to 14, Harbolnas is akin to Alibaba’s Singles Day in China, or Black Friday in the United States.

The e-commerce industry has grown larger amid increasing demand, according to Bukalapak’s vice president of marketing, Bayu Syerli Rachmat. Thus, he aimed to reap about Rp 300 billion in transactions during the Harbolnas event, a 50 percent improvement over last year’s figure of Rp 200 billion.

“I don’t think that there is a slowdown for now, especially when it comes to online shopping transactions. Our growth has been expanding by dozens per month and our daily transactions are a little less than Rp 100 billion every day,” he explained on Monday.

He explained that the increased target was a result of a heightened awareness of online shopping in Indonesia in the past years, coupled with improved resources from the Bukalapak team itself to meet the demand.

For Harbolnas, Bukalapak is expecting to see both traffic and revenues increase by 10 to 15 times, primarily driven by the bankable demographic of the 25- to 40-year-olds.

Bayu revealed that the trend of online shopping was still heading north despite an overall economic slowdown because the industry was not yet affected by the slowdown. Its low contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) suggested that it had wide room to grow, he said.

“In the times of an economic slowdown, rising prices and whatnot, people would seek more efficient methods of purchase. Cost wise, online prices tend to be cheaper because they eschew other factors such as space rental costs and the like,” he said.

Adding to that, Bukalapak’s chief financial officer, Muhammad Fajrin Rasyid, elaborated that for the year ahead the platform aimed to focus on developing and promoting its BukaDompet e-money payment service because bank transfers were still the most popular payment method on the site.

“Bank transfers and cash on delivery are the most popular methods in Bukalapak, but the thing is, payment cancellations have increased because many buyers tend to forget about the three-day deadline,” he said, explaining that even though major banks had put their e-money systems on the site, the idea of digital payment had yet to truly catch on.

He also commented that despite the plan to introduce a national payment gateway, the government still heavily focused on a system backbone instead of system integration, thereby prompting e-commerce platforms to further develop their in-house applications.

“E-money vendors are practically working alone and are usually incompatible with each other. We require a single payment gateway such as Alipay or PayPal in China and the US,” Fajrin said.

This year, 237 stores participated in Harbolnas, a quadruple increase compared to the event’s debut in 2012 when only seven e-commerce players were part of it. In 2013, 22 online stores joined in and the number surged to 78 in 2014.