Digital Payments: What Comes Next?

A few years ago, the central question was straightforward:

How many consumers and merchants use digital payments?

In 2026, the question is changing.

Indonesia recorded 16.07 billion digital-payment transactions in Q2 alone, up 36.88% year on year.[1]

QRIS transaction volume increased 100.12% year on year during the quarter.[1]

BI-FAST processed around 1.529 billion transactions worth Rp3,777 trillion.[1]

By June, QRIS had reached 65.77 million users and 44.86 million merchants, with 96.68% of those merchants classified as MSMEs.[2]

QRIS recorded 12.55 billion transactions worth approximately Rp1.12 quadrillion in the first half of 2026.[2]

At this scale, digital payment is no longer merely another way to pay.

The next question is:

Does it make businesses work better?

Adoption is no longer enough

Early digitalisation focused on acceptance.

Can the merchant receive QR payments?

Can the customer pay from an app?

Can less cash change hands?

Those achievements matter.

But they are inputs.

A digitally enabled merchant is not automatically more productive, more profitable or better financed.

The next phase is about business outcomes.

FEKDI arrives at the right moment

Bank Indonesia will hold FEKDI x Indonesia Fintech Summit & Expo 2026 on September 24–26 in cooperation with OJK, government and industry.[3]

The event sits within implementation of the Indonesia Payment System Blueprint 2030.

That blueprint has five major initiatives: Infrastructure, Industry, Innovation, International and Digital Rupiah.[4]

The next phase is therefore structurally broader than QR acceptance.

First came acceptance

QRIS solved a practical problem.

A small merchant could accept multiple payment sources through one national QR standard rather than displaying fragmented codes.

BI designed QRIS to improve interoperability, efficiency, security and inclusion.[5]

But payment acceptance is only the front door.

The back office still matters.

Next comes settlement

A customer sees “payment successful”.

For the merchant, several questions remain.

When is the money settled?

Can it be matched to the order?

Does the amount reconcile?

Is anything missing?

At high transaction volumes, tiny settlement mismatches create large administrative burdens.

Merchant experience therefore includes what happens after checkout.

Reconciliation can unlock real productivity

A business may receive orders from walk-ins, marketplaces, messaging apps, delivery platforms and its own website.

If finance staff manually match every payment, fee, refund and settlement, the front end is digital while the back office remains analogue.

The full productivity gain appears only when reconciliation is also automated or significantly simplified.

Merchant economics extend beyond MDR

From October 1, 2026, Bank Indonesia plans to expand 0% QRIS MDR to eligible transactions of up to Rp100,000.[3]

For small merchants, fees matter.

But total payment economics also include devices, connectivity, staff time, reconciliation, settlement speed, fraud losses and transaction failures.

A zero MDR component does not mean the complete economic cost of accepting payment is zero.

Cash-flow visibility matters

Digital transactions create a trail.

How much came in today?

When was the peak period?

What was refunded?

What settled?

If systems integrate properly, payment records can improve cash management.

But QRIS does not automatically create good bookkeeping.

Data still need consistent transaction identities and reconciliation.

Payment data may support financing visibility

A clean digital transaction trail can potentially provide richer evidence of business activity.

That connects directly to alternative credit scoring.

The careful formulation is:

digital payments can improve transaction visibility, which may support credit assessment.

They do not guarantee financing.

Underwriting still considers repayment capacity, obligations and wider risk.

Payments can also strengthen customer relationships

The transaction itself is a high-value customer moment.

A merchant can potentially connect it to:

digital receipts;

loyalty;

warranty;

membership;

order history;

or after-sales support.

But payment data cannot automatically be repurposed for unlimited marketing.

Privacy and purpose still matter.

Open APIs turn payments into infrastructure

Indonesia’s National Open API Payment Standard, SNAP, standardises technical, security, data, authentication and governance requirements for payment APIs.[6]

This matters because payment systems can connect more consistently with:

POS systems;

accounting;

ERP;

e-commerce;

treasury;

and other business applications.

Payment stops being a standalone app.

It becomes workflow infrastructure.

Cross-border is another growth layer

QRIS connectivity now extends across multiple partner markets, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and connectivity involving Japan.[7][8]

For relevant Indonesian merchants, particularly in tourism, cross-border QR can reduce friction.

Foreign visitors can use participating home-country applications while Indonesian merchants receive rupiah.

The infrastructure increasingly makes international retail payment feel local.

Cross-border access is not equal value for every merchant

A domestic neighbourhood merchant with almost no foreign customers gains little from international connectivity.

A merchant in Bali may gain more.

Business value therefore depends on location, customer profile and provider readiness.

Network capability is not the same as merchant-level value.

Fraud controls must scale with transactions

More digital transactions also create more need for verification and monitoring.

Access controls.

Alerts.

Reconciliation.

Anomaly checks.

Incident response.

Fast payments require controls that operate at comparable speed.

Efficiency without resilience is not real productivity.

Reliability becomes economic infrastructure

BSPI 2030 explicitly aims for an integrated and resilient payment system.[4]

Bank Indonesia has also restructured payment-system regulation around industry structure, risk management, activity development and partnerships.[9]

This matters more as dependency grows.

When millions of merchants depend on payments every day, an outage becomes economic interruption rather than a minor technical inconvenience.

The KPIs should change

Early success metrics were obvious:

merchant count;

user count;

transaction volume;

transaction value.

Those remain important.

But the next phase should also measure:

settlement time;

reconciliation differences;

payment failure;

automation into accounting;

fraud loss;

checkout conversion;

and cash-flow visibility.

These metrics are closer to business productivity.

Small businesses do not need complex analytics

A micro merchant does not need a data warehouse.

It may only need a simple view of:

today’s sales;

settled funds;

unmatched payments;

refunds;

fees;

and available balance.

Clarity often matters more than sophistication.

Payment providers also need a new value proposition

The old value proposition was:

“We let you accept digital payments.”

That is increasingly commoditised.

The next proposition could be:

“We make your business easier to operate.”

That creates room for better reconciliation, accounting integration, fraud tools, cash-flow visibility, loyalty, invoicing and working-capital connections.

Not everything needs to become embedded finance

Payment providers may be tempted to expand into credit, insurance, commerce and investment simply because they hold transaction data.

Integration only creates value when it solves a real problem.

More features do not automatically mean better infrastructure.

After adoption comes productivity

Indonesia’s 2026 payment data show that adoption is no longer the beginning of the story.

Tens of millions of users and merchants are already participating.

Transaction growth is substantial.

Cross-border connectivity is expanding.

Open API standards exist.

Industry regulation is evolving.

FEKDI x IFSE 2026 arrives at exactly this transition.

The next question is not:

“How many more QR codes can be installed?”

It is:

“How many business processes can become easier because payments are digital?”

Settlement.

Reconciliation.

Cash flow.

Customer relationships.

Financing visibility.

Cross-border commerce.

Risk control.

Accounting.

If those layers improve, digital payment stops looking like a payment technology.

It becomes something more fundamental:

business infrastructure.