The Association of State-Owned Banks (Himbara), state-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom Indonesia and state-owned oil and gas holding company Pertamina will jointly launch a QR Code payment service called Link Aja in late February or early March.

State-owned lender PT Bank Negara Indonesia's (BNI) information technology director Dadang Satiabudi said that, under the new system, QR services owned by state-owed lenders and Telkomsel Indonesia, a subsidiary of PT Telkom, would be merged into the Link Aja service.

He said the system would also accommodate foreign payment services like Alipay that wanted to operate in the country.

“After the construction of Link Aja is finished and it is in operation, the Alipay [payment platform] would be accommodated under the service,” Dadang said as quoted by kompas.com after attending an event in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Link Aja would have a separate entity outside the banking sector, but the stakeholders had not completed their talks on the scheme of the entity, he said, adding that the Link Aja licenses were still being processed at Bank Indonesia, which acts as a regulator for financial technology (fintech) for payment services.

The state owned banks that are involved in the formation of Link Aja are BNI, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), PT Bank Mandiri and PT Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN). (bbn)