According an Asia-Pacific region rep for the leading global payment processing service and credit card company, MasterCard, the company has intentions to create a new form of retail systems that will allow payments to be made using smartphones.
Group head of emerging payments in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific for MasterCard Worldwide, Phillip Yen, Indonesia is expected to be one of the top mobile payment markets. They believe that the popularity of this technology could be greater than the standard plastic credit and debit cards, “so we could enable similar services for people without a credit card or debit card today through the mobile device.”
Yen explained that the marketplace in Indonesia presents a number of important opportunities to MasterCard. There are already 180 million mobile users in the country, and this is being seen as potentially advantageous by the company.
Moreover, the concept of mobile payments is not brand new in Indonesia, as Telkomsel, the largest mobile-phone operator in the country, is already operating T-Cash, which is a similar service.
MasterCard’s vice president and senior country manager, Vadyo Munaan, said that they believe the additional mobile payment service will assist the country’s e-commerce. He then added that their company will make certain that there is solid security with the payment system.
Data from Sharing Vision, an IT company, indicated that in 2010, the Indonesian online sales reached $4.9 billion. That same company anticipates an increase of 28 percent as a result of an increase in the use of online payment services.
