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Indonesia Drops QRIS Fees on Small Payments: What Bank Indonesia Changed on October 1, 2026

From October 1, 2026, non-micro merchants in Indonesia pay no QRIS fee on payments up to Rp100,000. What Bank Indonesia changed, why, and what it means.

By Rowan Ashby Published 20.10.26 08:00 UTC 4 min read

Tap-on-bus Machine and QRIS Payment System on a Trans Metro Pasundan Bus — NFarras / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

By Rowan Ashby · October 20, 2026 · Data as of October 20, 2026

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What happened

Indonesia's national QR payment standard, QRIS, became cheaper this month for non-micro merchants on small payments. On August 17, 2026, Bank Indonesia (BI) announced (release No. 28/159/DKom) that it would expand its 0% merchant discount rate (MDR) policy, "effective from 1st October 2026."

The MDR is the fee a merchant pays when a customer settles a bill by scanning a QRIS code. Before the change, the only regular merchants with a 0% rate were micro businesses, on payments up to Rp500,000; certain public-sector and social payments were also already fee-free. Both continue. What is new is that small, medium and large merchants now pay 0% on payments up to Rp100,000. The English version of the BI release puts the previous rate on those payments at 0.7%.

BI's fee explainer, published in Indonesian on October 13, 2026, sets out the schedule now in force:

Merchant type	Up to threshold	Above threshold
Micro (UMI), threshold Rp500,000	0%	0.3%
Small, medium and large (UKE, UME, UBE), threshold Rp100,000	0%	0.7%
Education, threshold Rp100,000	0%	0.6%
Fuel stations (SPBU), threshold Rp100,000	0%	0.4%
Public service agencies, PSO, government-to-people and people-to-government payments	0%	0%

A note on conflicting pages. When we checked on October 20, 2026, BI's English QRIS page still showed the old schedule: flat rates of 0.7%, 0.6% and 0.4% for regular, education and fuel-station merchants, with no Rp100,000 tier. The official release (English and Indonesian) and BI's October 13 explainer both state the 0% rate up to Rp100,000, so we treat those as the current rules.

Why Bank Indonesia did it

The August 17 release presents the change as a way to make transactions cheaper for businesses and to spread the benefits of digital payments more widely, while keeping the payment industry viable. It ties the move to BI's Indonesia Payment System Blueprint 2030 and the government's Asta Cita program.

Scale explains why a fraction of a percent matters. The same release reports:

QRIS indicator	Figure	Period
Users	65.77 million	As of June 2026
Merchants	44.86 million, 96.68% of them MSMEs	Period not stated
Transactions	12.55 billion	First half of 2026
Transaction value	Rp1.12 quadrillion, up 93.92% year on year	First half of 2026

Analysis: Dividing value by number of transactions gives an average of roughly Rp89,000 per QRIS payment in the first half of 2026, below the new Rp100,000 threshold. An average does not show how many payments fall under the line, and we did not find that breakdown in BI's documents, but it suggests the zero-fee tier targets everyday QRIS use rather than a niche.

Who pays, and who gives up revenue

BI's fee explainer sets two rules. First, the MDR "ditanggung oleh merchant dan tidak boleh dibebankan kepada konsumen" (is borne by the merchant and may not be charged to consumers). Second, BI takes no share of the fee; it goes entirely to the payment industry, namely issuers, acquirers, switching companies, the Indonesian Payment System Association (ASPI) and the national settlement entity PTEN.

Analysis: The cost of the new zero-fee tier therefore falls on those payment firms, which no longer earn MDR on small payments at non-micro merchants. The release's emphasis on balance and industry sustainability reflects that trade-off. How the industry adjusts is not addressed in BI's documents.

The cross-border angle

BI's QRIS Cross-Border service lets QR codes work between Indonesia and partner countries. A September 22, 2026 release lists six partners: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China. An April 1, 2026 release traces the links back to Thailand in August 2022, with South Korea officially launched on April 1, 2026.

Usage is lopsided. By BI's count in the September 22 release, covering 2022 to July 2026, visitors from partner countries paid with QRIS in Indonesia 21 million times, for a combined Rp5.90 trillion. Payments the other way, by Indonesians abroad, came to about 4.67 million, adding up to Rp1.73 trillion.

The network may grow. On September 24, 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and BI signed a memorandum of understanding under which they will "explore arrangements to facilitate the interoperability of QR code-based cross-border payments between the two places." No launch date was given.

Does the fee change reach cross-border payments? BI's English QRIS page states in its QRIS Cross-Border section that "No additional fees are charged to merchants for accepting QRIS Cross-Border payments," and its FAQ says fees for merchants in Indonesia "are the same as for domestic QRIS transactions." Analysis: On that basis, the new tiers would appear to apply when a visitor from a partner country pays an Indonesian merchant. BI's October documents do not say so explicitly, and the same page still carries the old fee table, so this is our reading, not a confirmed rule.

What it means for readers

Analysis: This is a fee rule for merchants, not a product to buy.

Merchants in Indonesia. Non-micro merchants no longer pay a QRIS fee on payments up to Rp100,000; larger payments are charged at the rates above.
Shoppers and visitors. The MDR may not be passed on to customers in any case, so the direct effect on shoppers is limited. Currency conversion costs on cross-border QR payments are a separate matter not covered by these documents.
Payment and fintech watchers. Revenue shifts away from payment firms on small-ticket payments. The change also shows a Southeast Asian central bank setting retail payment fees directly while expanding its QR links abroad.