Develops retail payment system infrastructure and standardised open API.

Bank Indonesia (BI) has accelerated the digitalisation of the national economy and finance through the development of a real- time and round-the-clock retail payment system infrastructure with BI FAST, and the preparation of Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open API) Standards for Payments industry players.

Both initiatives are implementations of the Blueprint Indonesia Payment System 2025 (BSPI 2025) in providing a fast retail payment system infrastructure and realising an innovative, collaborative payment system provider industry with maintained security standards.

This positive development surfaced in the Leader’s Insight “Digitalization to Encourage Efficiency, as well as Interconnection and Interoperability”, said Doni P Joewono deputy governor of BI.

“The successful development and implementation of BI FAST and the implementation of the Open Payment API Standard requires participation, collaboration and commitment of various parties to realize an effective and sustainable digital transformation in providing payment services that are able to answer needs,” he said.

BI-FAST is a national retail payment system infrastructure that can facilitate retail payments using various payment instruments and channels, real-time and 24/7. Some of the features in BI Fast includes:

• Real timetransaction settlement at the bank and customer level, 24/7 service, validation, and Notification real time
• Use of a proxy addressas an alternative to the recipient’s account number, reliable security features in the form of fraud detection and the AML / CFT system (anti-money laundering / combating the financing of terrorism).
• The BI-FAST stage is currently in the development phase with a target of implementing individual credit transfer services by the end of 2021.

The Open Payment API Standard is BI’s effort to drive the digital transformation of the banking industry and the connectivity between banks and fintech through open banking.

The Open Payment API standard includes data standards, technical and security standards, and governance standards.

Through the implementation of the Open API Payment Standard by the industry, it is hoped that it can encourage:

• Efficiency, security and reliability
• Innovation and competitiveness through bank interlinkingwith fintech to support financial inclusion
• Mitigation of shadow bankingrisk through the implementation of regulations and equivalent standards in Open API payment services for banks and fintechs to realize level of playing field .

The preparation of the Payment Open API Standard begins with the issuance of a Consultative Paper for the Open API Payment Standard by BI in the first quarter of 2020, followed by the preparation of specifications for the Open Payment API Standard in close synergy with the National Working Group , as well as to support the implementation of the Open Payment API Standard, in 2021 BI will issue the relevant provisions.

BI will also release a developer site equipped with a sandbox for testing the development of the payment API, to support the start of the development and piloting phases in preparation for full implementation in 2022.

Tags: APIBank Indonesia