Rupiah's Readiness to Enter the Digital Currency Era

With an increasingly strong digital payment foundation, Indonesia possesses the essential capital to move towards the next stage. The way society transacts is changing rapidly. Money is no longer always present in physical form, while economic activities are shifting further into digital spaces. Payments in small shops, markets, transport, e-commerce, and even cross-border transactions are slowly moving towards a faster, more integrated, and digitised system.

In this context, the critical question for Indonesia is no longer whether digital transactions will become part of economic life, but rather how prepared the ecosystem for Rupiah-based digital transactions is to be built. The development of the Digital Rupiah, currently being prepared by Bank Indonesia (BI), is part of this process. During a working meeting with Commission XI of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) on 28 September 2026, the Governor of Bank Indonesia stated that BI has obtained a fatwa from the National Sharia Council regarding the permissibility of the digital currency and stablecoin being prepared by the central bank. Simultaneously, the development of the Digital Rupiah has entered an experimental stage for cross-border transactions.

While the fatwa is important, it should be viewed as one element of a much larger ecosystem. Readiness for digital transactions requires certainty from various aspects: reliable technology, transaction security, data protection, legal certainty, public literacy, interoperability between systems, consumer protection, and alignment with the values and needs of society. Thus, the journey towards the Digital Rupiah is not merely about converting the Rupiah from physical to digital form. More importantly, it involves preparing an infrastructure of trust so that the Rupiah remains a relevant means of payment amidst changes in financial technology.

Indonesia already possesses a sufficiently broad foundation to enter this stage. The public is well-accustomed to digital payments through various channels. As of June 2026, QRIS users reached 65.77 million, while the number of merchants reached 44.86 million, with 96.68 per cent of these merchants being MSMEs. Throughout the first half of 2026, QRIS recorded 12.55 billion transactions with a value of Rp1.12 quadrillion, representing a year-on-year growth of 93.92 per cent.

This development demonstrates that payment digitalisation has moved far beyond urban populations or large-scale businesses. Small shops, market traders, culinary entrepreneurs, creative workers, and micro-enterprises have become part of the digital payment ecosystem. In August 2026, the volume of digital payment transactions reached 6.11 billion, growing by 40.36 per cent annually, with QRIS transactions growing by 67.22 per cent. During the same period, BI-FAST recorded 549 million transactions with a value of Rp1,346 trillion.

This data is significant because it shows that Indonesia is not starting the Digital Rupiah from zero. The payment ecosystem has evolved through QRIS, BI-FAST, mobile banking, internet banking, and various other payment system infrastructures. The next challenge is how these developments can form an increasingly integrated ecosystem.

This is where the position of the Digital Rupiah needs to be correctly understood. The Digital Rupiah is a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)—the Rupiah in digital form that represents a direct claim on the central bank. It is designed as a complement to, not a replacement for, physical cash. This position differs from crypto assets and stablecoins, which possess different characteristics, issuers, risks, and regulatory frameworks. This distinction is vital because the evolution of monetary technology presents increasingly diverse instrument options. The public needs to understand that not all digital assets are money, and not all digital payment instruments carry the same risk profile.