“Countries that have advanced G2P [government-to-person] payment systems have been able to deliver cash to vulnerable people much faster and much safer than countries that don’t have such a system,” World Bank Indonesia and Timor Leste country director Satu Kahkonen said during a recent webinar.

She cited Chile, which has used its national ID-linked bank accounts to deliver social support to about 2 million citizens during the pandemic, and Thailand, which used its national digital identification system to deliver emergency support to 15.3 million additional households during the pandemic.

She said Indonesia had been able to scale up its social aid programs such as the Family Hope Program (PKH) and the staple food card program. But she added it was important to digitize the verification and onboarding process for aid recipients and ensure that databases were interoperable between institutions to avoid overlapping beneficiaries.

“That [digitization] would basically improve response time, and over time, it would also save money for the government,” Kahkonen said.

Michael Wiegand, director for financial services for the poor at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said focusing on the digitization of social aid disbursement was key but that ensuring that such mechanisms did not exclude certain parts of society was equally important.

“We really need to make sure these systems don’t exclude people and that they allow them to get access to services they need. Being able to move these digital funds and convert them into cash is critical,” he said.

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