The National Payment Gateway (GPN) may burden both consumers and banks as Bank Indonesia (BI) requires all bank customers to have at least one GPN card,  the University of Indonesia's Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM UI) has said.

LPEM UI researcher Chaikal Nuryakin said on Wednesday that based on BI’s target, following the issuance of Article 43 of BI Regulation No. 19/10/PADG/2017, 100 million GPN cards needed to be issued.

"The problem is that the GPN cards cannot be used for transactions abroad. Some customers will have it but they leave it dormant while the administration cost will be incurred," he said during a press conference in Jakarta.

LPEM UI’s study found that at least 22.5 million cards out of 100 million would be dormant and that it would cost banks Rp 585 billion (US$41.54 million) to issue the 22.5 million cards.

"It would be better if BI loosened the regulation so that GPN cards were optional. So it is up to customers whether or not they want to have it," Chaikal said.

This was because GPN cards could only be used for domestic transactions and could not be embedded with foreign switching companies such as Visa and Mastercard, he added. (bbn)