General Manager of BCA Consumer Card, Mr Charles Santoso, predicted the bank’s online transactions to grow within a range of 50% to 80% in 2016, compared to 2014, after seeing growth nearly double in the January-September period of 2015, thejakartapost.com reports.
As of September, 2015, the lender booked (USD 326.3 million in ecommerce transactions, more than a third of which came from debit cards. The rapid growth of ecommerce transactions in the recent years was triggered by the country’s high internet usage, with user numbers growing 23.6% on average each year to 88.1 million users as of 2014, from 16 million in 2005, according to Mr Santoso, the source cites.
“The real sector also saw rising costs, which decreased sales in physical commerce, such as retail, hypermarket and wholesale sellers. The situation triggered small vendors to enter ecommerce as the government also supported the efforts,” he explained.
To boost transaction growth in 2016, BCA has launched a promotional program called “e-Shopping Carnival 2015”, which will run from 8 December, 2015, with 16 ecommerce merchants, including blanja.com, alfaonline.com, tiket.com and blibli.com.
The program, which offers discounts and benefits to BCA customers, enables customers of other cardholders of global credit card principals, such as Visa, MasterCard, JCB and American Express. Aside of that, Mr Santoso said the bank’s ecommerce transaction growth would also be supported by the bank’s effort to add around 100 to 150 merchants next year from 420 partners currently, including hotels, travel and electronics companies.
He further said that the bank would also launch a new initiative to grab the massive online shopping transaction phenomenon with social media platforms, which often had smaller transaction values and relied on traditional payment methods, such as cash-on-delivery (COD) and ATM transfer.
Indonesian E-commerce Association (IdEA) chairman Daniel Tumiwa welcomes BCA’s initiative to spur growth in the domestic ecommerce industry, saying that “the government, banks and all ecommerce players are moving together with good coordination, so that we can improve and evaluate the industry.”
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