Standardized payment infrastructure and continuous dialogue between regulators and market participants can accelerate fintech development, Vince Henry Iswaratioso, CEO and Co-founder of Indonesian payment platform DANA, said, Trend's special correspondent reports from Tashkent. Speaking at the Silk Road Finance & Technology Forum, he said bilateral agreements can provide companies with greater control over project economics and technology at the early stages of market development. However, as the market expands, a more standardized infrastructure becomes increasingly effective.
"At the beginning, we preferred bilateral agreements because then you have more control over the unit economics and how the technology works. But then we moved toward a centralized approach and standardization," Iswaratioso said. He noted that as the market grows, it becomes less efficient for individual companies to build their own payment infrastructure and ecosystems.
"I truly believe that a centralized approach is going to play a big role in making sure that it is the same playing field for everyone. When that happens, companies automatically become much more focused on building a better product, instead of everyone trying to build their own rails," he said. According to Iswaratioso, the development of QR payments in Indonesia is an example of how standardization can support market expansion.
A common standard endorsed by the central bank has enabled market participants to use shared infrastructure rather than develop separate solutions. "When you talk about QR, everyone knows it and trusts it because it is endorsed by the central bank. Everyone is adopting it, so there are no questions — we just use it," he said.
At the same time, Iswaratioso emphasized that a centralized approach needs to be complemented by mechanisms for dialogue between the government, regulators and the private sector. He highlighted Indonesia's self-regulatory organization (SRO) initiative, which brings together payment service providers and other institutions licensed by the central bank. "Every payment service provider, every institution that has a license from the central bank, has to be part of that SRO.
Automatically, there is a dialogue where we discuss new products and new regulations," Iswaratioso said. He added that working groups and committees within the SRO discuss the central bank's development roadmap, including its plans for the next five years, while regulatory sandboxes help accelerate the testing of new solutions. "We have working groups and committees that directly discuss everything on the roadmap of the central bank for the next five years," he said.
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