Citizens Report Difficulty Exchanging Money Through Bank Indonesia's PINTAR Application

A number of citizens were seen queuing to exchange rupiah notes at Bank Indonesia’s mobile cash service outside Gambir Station in Jakarta on Monday morning, 16 March 2026. Monitoring by Tempo at the location revealed that the central bank had deployed two mobile cash vehicles.

One of the citizens exchanging money at the mobile cash service was Dinar. She and her family planned to travel back to Pekalongan. That morning, Dinar exchanged 3.8 million rupiah. She learned about the mobile cash service through her husband, who works at the station.

According to Dinar, she had experienced difficulties exchanging money, as she was unable to obtain a queue number through the Bank Indonesia PINTAR application. “Getting a queue number is difficult; even waiting 24 hours doesn’t guarantee you get one. Before you know it, the slots are gone,” Dinar said when met at Gambir Station.

A similar experience was reported by Efrida. Like Dinar, she also failed to obtain a queue number through the PINTAR application. Efrida ultimately decided to exchange money at the mobile cash service after learning about it through social media. According to her, the money exchange process at the mobile cash service was fairly straightforward. She exchanged 4 million rupiah in denominations of 20,000, 10,000, 5,000 and 2,000 rupiah notes.

Efrida said she preferred not to exchange money anywhere other than Bank Indonesia, as exchanges outside the BI service typically incurred higher fees. “You can find exchangers on the street, but usually people who have already exchanged and resold notes end up being charged administrative fees,” Efrida said.

Muhammad Anwar Bashori, head of Bank Indonesia’s Currency Management Department, said public interest in exchanging rupiah notes ahead of Eid 2026 was exceptionally high. As of 13 March 2026, BI recorded 1,076,282 money exchanges through official services, a figure representing an 85.4 per cent increase compared to the previous year, which saw 580,496 exchanges.

As a result, Bank Indonesia deployed additional exchange services on 16-17 March 2026 focusing on locations with high migration traffic, such as airports, stations, terminals, ports and rest areas. “The total quota for these additional services reached approximately 11,900 exchange packages,” Anwar said in a written statement on Monday, 16 March 2026.