Indonesians Prefer Digital Wallets to Credit and Debit Cards: Entrust

TheIndonesia.id - Most Indonesians choose digital wallets over credit and debit cards as their preferred payment method, the latest Great Payments Disruption report published by tech company Entrust revealed.

In their report, Entrust said Indonesia recorded the highest use of digital wallets among other countries surveyed.

“There’s no other country in the world recorded a figure as high as in Indonesia at 65 percent, among the nine other countries that we surveyed,” Entrust’s regional vice president, Asia Pacific, & Japan Entrust Angus McDougall said on Tuesday, March 15, as reported by Antara.

He said the positive tendency among consumers in Indonesia to accept new technologies and encouragement from the government to adopt digital wallets are the two main reasons for why digital wallets are becoming the most popular option in the country.

“Our data shows that there around 48 different e-wallet platforms in Indonesia,” McDougall reported.

The report surveyed 1,350 consumers in nine countries who have made digital transactions in the past 12 months. Aside from Indonesia, the countries were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and Australia.

Globally, digital wallets are the second least popular with only 22 percent of participants prefer them to other methods.

Credit and debit cards with chip became the most preferred option with 50 percent of respondents choosing them, while contactless credit and debit cards were in second place and preferred by 48 percent of respondents.

Furthermore, 80 percent of participants from Indonesian said they prefer to make banking transactions digitally. However, 83 percent of them said they’re concerned of potential fraud.

“Given consumers’ massive concerns about fraud and their flight risk of switching banks when they are victims of fraud, banks and credit unions should consider investing in high-quality security tools and highlighting the strength of those solutions to customers for both general banking and payments,” the report suggested.

“They should consider a security portfolio built on trusted identities, data and payments. An effective portfolio should feature encryption or tokenization with strong key protection to safeguard sensitive data.”