Afief Yona Ramadhana

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Wise stating that I would no longer be able to hold a balance in my account. I’m not sure what happened or what they have planned, but I hope it’s for the better.

That email reminded me of the very reason I created an account on Wise. I only use it for online transactions and for Apple Pay integration, which I can use when I’m in Singapore. Apple Pay itself is not available in Indonesia.

When it comes to purchasing using electronic money, the available options are either using a debit/credit card or QRIS. Using a debit/credit card isn’t the safest option, as cashiers usually write our full 16-digit card number into their system, and we don’t even know the credibility of the EDC machine. Some EDC machines already support contactless payment (Paywave), but the cashiers often don’t know how to operate them. I’ve found some cashiers in Jakarta who are okay with contactless prepaid cards.

The safer option is to use QRIS, but it’s not fast enough. We need to take out our phone, open the bank app, scan the QR code, manually type the amount (sometimes it’s automatic), enter our PIN number, then show the payment result on our phone to the cashier and wait for the transaction to finish.

However, I still believe that payments using Apple Pay/Google Pay are the fastest and safest, especially since we can integrate them with smartwatches. When I was in Singapore, I was very happy to be able to use my watch to pass through the MRT gate without having to take out my wallet to get the payment card or open my phone and login to the bank app to scan the QR code.