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nline shopping, which is getting more popular here, has laid the ground for fresh business opportunities for long-standing businesses including banks that have begun offering payment services for the growing number of online merchants and shoppers.

Suwignyo Budiman, a director of PT Bank Central Indonesia (BCA), said that approximately 56 online stores were now connected to the bank'€™s KlikPay service.

'€œWhen we started, not many sites required our services but now there is a long queue of sites,'€ he said.

Launched last year, KlikPay is the bank'€™s online payment service targeting e-commerce sites.

The service enables BCA account holders to pay for their online purchases by credit card.

'€œWe are planning to extend our services by including Flazz, the bank'€™s prepaid card,'€ he said.

BCA became the first bank to connect e-commerce sites directly to the bank. Previously, payment choices were generally limited to money transfers via automated teller machines (ATM), or credit card transactions conducted through foreign payment gateways.

Suwignyo added that the bank saw great potential in e-commerce, given the increasing number of people who have turned to online stores to shop.

'€œThe youth especially are starting to buy goods, from electronics to clothes, from e-stores,'€ he said.

He added that approximately 3 million daily transactions passed through KlikBCA, the bank'€™s overarching electronic banking service within which KlikPay operates.

'€œThe value of these transactions surpasses those made through automated teller machines by two to three times,'€ he said.

He pointed out the number and value of transactions rose by up to 50 percent on average annually.

Suwignyo said that a majority of the transactions were made by individuals, although the transaction value generated by corporate clients including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), was higher.

'€œApproximately 100,000 merchants, large and small, use our service,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

Rico Usthavia Frans, senior vice president of electronic banking at Bank Mandiri, added that last year, the bank handled transactions worth roughly Rp 1.4 trillion made via Mandiri Clickpay, the bank'€™s Internet banking service.

'€œThis Rp 1.4 trillion (US$ 144.2 million) is closely related to e-commerce, such as the purchase of airplane tickets,'€
he said.

This year, he added, the bank expected to see its transactions increase by 30 percent because '€œmore people are learning about and trusting'€ Internet banking services.

Maximilian Bittner, the CEO of Lazada Southeast Asia, said that e-commerce was not '€œa disruptive force that negatively impacted other sectors'€.

'€œInstead, e-commerce injects additional value into the economic value chain,'€ he said.

Lazada is one of the latest e-commerce companies to enter the Indonesian market via their online store, Lazada.co.id. The site allows buyers to pay through various methods, including cash on delivery (COD).

He said that e-commerce would also spur the financing sector because these sites could become a channel through which financing companies provided consumer credit.

He added that payment services, as well as other business that facilitated e-commerce, were critical for e-commerce sites to function and grow as well.

'€œIndonesia will take a bit more time to grow into a developed e-commerce market but with new technology and payment methods, the country can leap the gap,'€ he said.

'€”JP/Mariel Grazella