Mastercard and Artajasa to support Indonesia’s National Payment Gateway

Mastercard and PT Artajasa Pembayaran Elektronis (Artajasa) have announced a cooperation agreement aimed at supporting and enhancing the overall capability of Indonesia’s National Payment Gateway (NPG) ecosystem. This is the first partnership in the NPG ecosystem between a domestic switching company and an international payments network to receive Bank Indonesia’s official approval.

It also reaffirms both Artajasa and Mastercard’s long-term commitment towards furthering the National Non-Cash Movement through the development of electronic payments in the country, aligned with Indonesia’s Payment System (IPS) 2025 Visions roadmap. The partnership announcement comes at a strategic time, especially in light of the Indonesian government’s push towards boosting the contribution of the digital economy to the nation’s GDP.

Through the partnership with Artajasa, Mastercard will bring its globally deployed safety, security, fraud monitoring and scoring to bear for all domestic debit card transactions. Additionally, Mastercard will be focused on enhancing Artajasa’s capacity and capability in payment transaction processing.

Per Bank Indonesia’s regulations, domestic NPG switching institutions, such as Artajasa, are allowed to partner with a maximum of two non-NPG Switching Providers. The same regulations also allow Mastercard to partner with a maximum of two of the four NPG Switching Providers. This is in compliance with Bank Indonesia’s regulation to develop the national payments ecosystem.

Currently, the partnership is focused on processing and managing debit card transactions within Indonesia. In the future, the partnership may scale to include processing transactions across other digital payments environments, such as e-commerce. Through the partnership, issuing banks gain access to the latest fraud and risk mitigation solutions, while acquiring banks and merchants are enabled to decrease any incidence of fraudulent transactions. With the latest authentication technologies, such as tokenisation, cardholders are incentivised to use their cards across payment channels with peace of mind that their transactions are safe and secure.