Credit card body seeks firm laws

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Credit Card Association (AKKI) wants tougher laws to crack down on credit card crimes.

AKKI's vice chairman Malik Habir said yesterday existing credit card laws were not strong enough or clear enough.

"The agencies in charge of taking care of the crimes must evaluate the existing laws," he said.

Malik said the association was working with the central bank, Bank Indonesia, the police, and the prosecution office to improve their response to credit card crime.

He said the related agencies often conflicted in their approach to credit card crime.

Police usually wanted access to the bank's account records, so that they could detect fraud, but the bank was bound by confidentiality requirements, he said.

"We need to settle conflicts like this, and strengthen the punishment for offenders," he said.

He said credit card fraud usually involved the offender duplicating cards, submitting fraudulent applications or transferring data contained in the magnetic strip on a credit card.

Malik said, after Visa Card's celebration for its millionth cardholder, that credit card crimes were still low in Indonesia compared with other countries.

The Country Manager of Visa International in Indonesia, Ellyana Fuad, said the amount of Visa credit card write-off, which includes fraud and other losses, was about 2.1 percent of total transactions during this year's first quarter of US$4.8 million.

"This is still lower than the internationally tolerated amount," Ellyana said.

Indonesia has about 1.7 million credit cards in use, 1 million of them issued by Visa.

Visa, which started in Indonesia 14 years ago, estimates that the value of Visa credit transactions in Indonesia reached US$1.54 billion last year, a 26 percent growth from the previous year, and $421 million during this year's first quarter.

Ellyana said she saw bright prospects for credit cards in the country.

"Less than 1 percent of Indonesia's 200 million people own credit cards," she said.

She said that with the existing rate of economic growth, the number of credit card holders was expected to rise rapidly in the next few years. (das)