B

anks are looking to tap into Indonesians’ love of traveling — which often comes with incidental spending and payments for leisure services — by partnering with e-commerce players to boost their credit card businesses.

Over the past few years, the interest of Indonesians in travel and tourism has been getting stronger with a 56 percent increase in domestic flights and a 64 percent rise in hotel bookings during the period 2011 to 2016, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) revealed.

In the first six months of the year, 41.5 million passengers traveled on domestic flights, a 10.22 percent increase on a year-on-year basis. The figure is almost twice as large as Australia’s population, which stands at 24 million.

Observing the trend, state-owned lender Bank Mandiri — the country’s largest lender in terms of assets — has widened its scope of partnership with online travel service Traveloka, enabling its credit card holders to enjoy special discounts on flight tickets and hotel purchases.

“Our goal is to leverage Traveloka’s platform so we can give better services to 2 million of our credit card holders,” said Vira Widiyasari, Bank Mandiri senior vice president for credit cards, on Wednesday.

The partnership is part of the bank’s strategy to boost transaction volumes this year. Credit card usage for travel contributes almost 20 percent to Bank Mandiri’s total credit card transactions, while the rest comes from transactions for food, beverages and fashion products.

Bank Mandiri and Traveloka offer the lender’s credit card holders discounts of up to Rp 720,000 (US$53.92) for flight and hotel booking packages with a minimum transaction price of Rp 1.7 million.

The offer — which lasts from Aug. 17 to Aug. 31 — is limited to 10 tourist destinations, namely, Borobudur, Thousand Islands, Lake Toba, Pantai Tanjung Kelayang, Tanjung Lesung, Mandalika, Bromo Tengger Semeru, Labuan Bajo, Wakatobi and Morotai.

It is part of the bank’s support for the government’s effort to attract 20 million tourists by 2019, double the figure of last year. The government is launching a massive promotional campaign alongside infrastructure spending in the 10 destinations to transform them into “New Balis.”

Bank Mandiri targets to jack up the volume of its credit card transactions by around 10 percent this year to Rp 30 trillion.

“As of June, total credit card transactions hit Rp 14.8 trillion,” Bank Mandiri retail banking director Tardi told The Jakarta Post.

In terms of outstanding loans, Mandiri’s credit card loan amount grew by 9.61 percent year-on-year to Rp 9.6 trillion in the first six months of the year.

Similar to Bank Mandiri’s new business strategy, Malaysian controlled lender CIMB Niaga is also focusing on the travel segment to boost its credit card business.

The publicly listed lender has partnered with e-commerce sites such as Traveloka, online ticket booking sites Tiket.com to offer various promotions such as zero percent installments.

“CIMB Niaga is also focusing on the travel segment. The first is via travel fairs where CIMB Niaga this year will partner with Kompas Travel Fair, Garuda Travel Fair for outside Jakarta and the Air Asia travel fair in Jakarta and Bali,” CIMB Niaga retail banking products head Budiman Tanjung said via a text message.

The lender has participated in the Kompas Travel Fair for three years in a row.

CIMB Niaga hopes that by providing various promotions to customers, it can increase credit card transaction volumes by 15 percent this year. As of June, the bank booked Rp 15 trillion in credit card transactions.