MasterCard sees no fall in credit card use

JAKARTA (JP): MasterCard International said yesterday that transactions with credit cards in Indonesia have remained high despite the monetary crisis.

MasterCard's director for member relations and marketing in Indonesia Bambang Gunawan said the company had not yet seen any decline in transaction volume and card applications.

"The number of MasterCard holders in Indonesia increased 40 percent as of November this year, with the transaction volume up 40 percent," he said at a press briefing announcing the winner of the "Win Your Weight in Gold" lucky draw.

He attributed the sharp rise partly to the draw, conducted by MasterCard between January and August.

The winner of the draw was a Bank Tamara Gold MasterCard holder, who will compete with winners from six other Asia-Pacific countries to win the grand prize -- the winner's weight in gold.

Bambang said MasterCard operates under 22 financial institutions in Indonesia -- 19 banks and three non-banking institutions -- and has about 150,000 gold cardholders.

Banks which carry MasterCard include Bank Bali, Bank Lippo, Bank Danamon, Bank Central Asia and state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia.

He estimated that over 1.7 million Indonesians have credit cards, and the number had been rising in line with the country's prosperity.

Bank Tamara's card center manager Budi Setiawan said his bank also saw no downfall in the transaction volume of credit cards.

"The transaction volume has increased the last two months due to the increase in purchases in face of the Christmas and Idul Fitri holidays," Budi said, declining to give details of the transaction volume.

Budi said Bank Tamara, which issued Bank Tamara MasterCard in June last year, had about 16,500 cardholders throughout Indonesia as of November.

He said about 35 percent were gold card holders and the remaining 35 percent were classic card holders.

Budi admitted the bank had revised its target of cardholders due to the monetary crisis.

"We expect that we'll have 23,000 cardholders in July next year. Our initial target was 25,000," he said.

He said the bank had raised its credit card interest rates to 4 percent since October, from 3.25 percent, to adjust for the hike in the deposit interest rate.

Besides credit cards, MasterCard International operates cash and debit cards under the names Maestro and Cirrus.

The company is dedicated to helping more than 23,000 financial institutions around the world offer consumers a variety of payment options.

MasterCard has 400 million credit and debit cards which are accepted at more than 13 million locations worldwide.

The company booked US$550 billion in gross transaction volume worldwide last year. (gis)