Mohammad Iman Mahlil Lubis (39) recently went viral for replacing Indonesian Standard QR Codes, or QRIS, donation boxes at 38 mosques and prayer rooms around Jakarta and Tangerang. He was subsequently named a suspect because the QRIS stickers he installed were fake and did not belong to the respective mosque administrators.
Following this incident, Fitria Irmi Triswati, Director of the Payment System Policy Department at Bank Indonesia (BI), stated that the institution would strengthen the supervision and verification of QRIS merchants.
"What needs to be improved is public awareness, while we mitigate the risks," said Fitria, as quoted by Katadata.co.id on Tuesday (11/4/2023).
Fitria said that BI has coordinated with stakeholders to avoid similar incidents. These stakeholders include the Indonesian Payment System Association (ASPI), Payment Service Providers (PSPs), Payment System Infrastructure Providers (PIPs), and PT. National Electronic Transaction Settlement (PTEN).
Fitria continued that the coordination was carried out to identify the profiles of other suspicious QRIS merchants. According to her, the fraud suspect who was arrested by the Police registered as a regular QRIS merchant.
QRIS merchants are divided into two types: regular QRIS and social fundraisers QRIS. The difference is that regular QRIS is charged a merchant discount rate of 0.7%, while social fundraisers QRIS are not charged.
So, how many QRIS merchants are there in DKI Jakarta currently?
According to a report by Bank Indonesia (BI), there were approximately 3.95 million merchants in DKI Jakarta serving transactions via QRIS until Q3 2022.
That number has increased almost sixfold compared to the beginning of the pandemic. In Q1 2022, QRIS merchants in the capital were only around 672,000.
In Q3 2022, QRIS merchants in DKI Jakarta were dominated by micro-businesses at 38%. Then 29% were classified as small businesses, 23% medium businesses, 7% large businesses, and 3% regular businesses.