VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
I recently shot a video about using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in Indonesia. I wanted to test how well this Malaysian digital wallet would work scanning QRIS QR codes in Indonesia and processing cross border payments. For the most part, Touch ‘n Go worked extremely well, and I would recommend any visitor to Indonesia from Malaysia to give it a try.
But as a follow-up, I wanted to also experience using one of the many Indonesian e-wallets. There are many to choose from, such as GoPay, OVO, Dana, ShopeePay, and more. I decided to use GoPay. It seemed to be the most foreigner-friendly. And it is connected directly to the GoJek super app with food delivery and car and motorcycle ride services.
In this video, I talk about the Indonesian QR code payment network QRIS. I discuss what it is and how it works. And I demonstrate scanning QRIS codes and making payments with the GoPay e-wallet in a variety of situations. I shot video of myself using GoPay and QRIS in 10 different real-world situations. I also provide a detailed tutorial on how to download the GoPay app and how to add money to your e-wallet and then use it.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
You are coming to Indonesia. It could be a business trip. Maybe you’re attending a conference. Or you could be a low-budget backpacker. And you’re going to roam around all 17,000 islands traveling by local bus, train, and boat. Should you use QRIS and an e-wallet on your trip? Yes, absolutely. I think you should. Of course, I could be biased because I’ve lived in Asia for a long time and I’m accustomed to e-wallets. I love using them. But you could be from the West. You could be from the United States or Europe. And maybe you don’t even know what an e-wallet is. Maybe you’ve never even heard of them. You’ve almost certainly never heard of QRIS. But I think QRIS and an e-wallet offers a lot of benefits for any visitor coming to Indonesia. But first, what is an e-wallet? We all know what a regular wallet is. Here’s mine. A little worse for wear, about 7 years old, a little dorky with Velcro and zippers. We all keep our wallet in our pocket or in our purse, and we fill it with money. And everywhere we go, we pay for things with cold, hard cash. An e-wallet is just like that, except it is on your smartphone. You fill it with money and then you spend it. But instead of handing over crumpled, dirty old bills, all you do is open an e-wallet app, scan a QR code, and the money is transferred from your e-wallet to the merchant’s e-wallet or to their bank account, and this payment goes through the QRIS QR code payment network. You’ll hear people talk about QRIS a lot. QRIS. It stands for Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard. It’s a big topic in the news and a source of national pride here in Indonesia. You can think of QRIS as a highway and money flows along the highway to all the different e-wallets and bank accounts. And this is really quite something when you think about it. Most foreign visitors to Indonesia don’t realize just how big Indonesia is. In fact, it is the fourth largest country in the world by population. Nearly 300 million people live here, spread across 17,000 islands. And the QRIS payment network connects all of them together. The good thing is you don’t need to build the highway. You don’t even need to know how the highway works. All you need to do is open the e-wallet app on your phone, scan the QR code, and the payment goes through automatically. But before this gets too technical and too complicated, let me show you a few examples of how it works in the real world, and you’ll see how simple it really is. Let’s start with a fun example. Let’s get a cup of coffee at a traditional Banda Aceh coffee shop. One thing you might think about is how do you know whether you can use QRIS and an e-wallet or not? Well, sometimes you will see the QRIS symbol and a QRIS QR code on the outside. They’ll post it in the window or on the wall. And if you see the QR code from QRIS, you know you can use your e-wallet here. But sometimes, most of the time in fact, they don’t have it on the outside. But then you can go inside and look around and see if you can spot the QRIS symbol or not. So there’s the coffee area. And right away I can spot the QR code from QRIS. Can you see it? My eyes are trained now because it has the red triangles surrounding the QR code right there. So now that I see the QR code and you can see the name of the coffee shop Solong Ulee Kareng up above, I know I can use the QRIS system and an e-wallet here. It’s important to note that this QR code is not just decorative. This code is linked to this business. And to make a payment here, you scan that actual code. I have my coffee. This is sanger coffee, a traditional coffee in Aceh Province. It’s very, very good. I got mine iced today. I haven’t paid for it yet. We’ll do that afterward, and I’ll show you that process. Another important thing to realize is that there is only one QRIS. QRIS by definition is the national QR code standard for the whole country. But even though there is only one QRIS, there are actually many different e-wallets. And that’s kind of the whole point of the QRIS system, they standardized QR codes. In the past, every e-wallet used a different QR code. So, a coffee shop like this one would have to have five different QR codes on display, one for each of the major e-wallets. But then QRIS came along and they standardized it. So, every e-wallet can scan the same QR code. That’s QRIS. So, even though there is only one QRIS, there are in fact many different e-wallets and you can choose which one you want to use. Currently, I’m using an e-wallet called GoPay, which is part of the Gojek super app. I think it is the most foreigner friendly one, has more English in the menu systems. It just feels more accessible to foreigners, I think, than the other ones. And I would recommend starting off with GoPay and Gojek. See if you like it. But you can also use OVO or DANA, ShopeePay, other e-wallets like that. And once you choose which e-wallet you want to try, all you have to do is download the e-wallet app to your phone and open an account. And I’ll show you how to do that after I’ve shown you all of these fun examples. All right, my coffee is done and now it’s time for me to go up to the counter and pay using my e-wallet to scan the QRIS code. Let’s see how it works out. So, here is the Gojek app on my phone. So, I’m going to open the Gojek app. And here you can see a line shows my balance. I currently have 64,000 rupiah more or less. And then there is a button over here that says pay. Very, very small button. And that’s the button you click on to open the scanner. And you’re not using the phone’s scanner technically. You have to scan the code from inside the app. So you don’t look for a scan button. You only look for the pay button and then that will automatically open the scanner. Bisa QRIS. So they do use QRIS. So you hit the pay button, opens the scanner, and there we have it. Berapa harganya? How much? 15,000. Okay. Lima belas. So lima belas ribu 15,000. So you enter the amount 15. So 15,000 rupiah. You hit the confirm button. Now I pay 15,000 and then you can either enter your PIN or thumbprint to confirm. Now they are processing the payment. We should see there we are payment successful. Okay. And you can show the screen to the people at the coffee shop and they can confirm that you paid. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
And now, now that I’ve paid, if you want to, you can confirm all the details to make sure that everything’s okay. There’s a line here called payment detail. Click on that little down arrow and you can see the payment method was GoPay successful payment, the time, the date, transaction ID, who the payment went to, and the amount. And down here at the bottom there is a share receipt button. So everything looks great. Nothing really could be easier. Pro tip for a beginner using QRIS and e-wallets. Probably one of the most important things to know is whether or not you can use QRIS and an e-wallet to pay for your purchase, to pay for your meal, to pay for your Grab car, whatever it is you’re doing. And there are a variety of situations you’ll run into here in Indonesia. I talked about it a little bit at the beginning. So, the first thing you do is look at the outside of the business. And if you see the QRIS symbol and the QR code in the window or posted on the wall, you’re good to go. If not, you can go inside the business and they often have the QRIS sign mounted near the cash register near the cashier. If you see it there, again, you can pay with your e-wallet by scanning the QRIS QR code. But sometimes you don’t see a sign on the outside and you don’t see one on the inside, but they can still accept QRIS because they might have the sign, but they’ve sort of tucked it away behind the counter. That happens to me quite a bit. So instead of putting it out on display, for some reason, they have it behind the counter and it’s hidden from view. Sometimes they have a whole different system where they have a machine and they have to enter the transaction into this machine and it presents the QR code or they will even print out a receipt and the QR code will be printed on the receipt. Hello, how are you? And in all those cases, it’s not completely obvious that they accept e-wallets by scanning a QR code. So, what you can do, finally getting around to my pro tip, you just ask bisa QRIS or bisa QRIS. People pronounce it two different ways, QRIS or QRIS. And bisa in Indonesian kind of means can I or is it possible? So saying bisa QRIS, may I pay with QRIS? So no matter where you go, you can just go up to the counter, go up to the clerk, go up to the waiter, the attendant, whoever it is, and say bisa QRIS. And then they will say yes or no. And then they will show you the QR code that you have to scan. So remember that very, very powerful very important phrase bisa QRIS. I am here at the main mosque of Banda Aceh famous for its beauty and for having survived the 2004 tsunami. And at the entrance to the mosque, there’s a small building where you leave behind your shoes and sandals. And they ask for a 1,000 rupiah donation for this service. So, they have a cash box here, a traditional money box, right, with a slot on the top where you can insert your 1,000 rupiah. But they’ve modernized and you can also pay with QRIS by scanning this code right here. It’s quite easy to do. You just open your e-wallet. In my case, I’m using GoPay, which is a part of Gojek. So, I’m going to open Gojek. And in the app, you’ll see a small pay button. If I click on that pay button, it will open up a scanner. You can see there’s a scanner running and you scan the QR code and it will open up a payment window. And the way it works here is that you don’t enter the amount. They have a 1,000 rupiah preset amount. And then all you need to do is click on the pay button at the bottom
and 1,000 rupiah will be transferred from my e-wallet to their bank account or to their e-wallet. In this case, I have to enter my PIN. I have it set up that way right now in order to authorize the transaction. And now they are processing my payment. And there you have it. And you get a sign here successfully paid. And then it gives you the name of the company payment detail. You can open up a more detailed window that shows you the time, the date, transaction ID, and you can see the amount that you’ve transferred.
Okay. Pro tip. To do this, you need to have an Indonesian phone number and a SIM card and a mobile internet connection.
As you can probably hear, I’m standing right across the road from the main mosque in Banda Aceh. And one of the interesting things you can do with QRIS is give donations to charities. And all around Southeast Asia, we recently had a bad storm with heavy rains and flooding and landslides and Aceh province was hit very hard. And this is one of the many organizations that is raising money for relief. And great thing with QRIS is you can put your QR code anywhere you like and you can scan this code and make a donation to this charity. So just like any transaction, you just begin by opening your e-wallet. In this case, I’m using Gojek. You can see my balance there. I have 114,000 rupiah in my e-wallet at the moment. Click on the pay button which opens up a scanner. And now assuming you have a internet connection, you just scan the QR code.
So I’ve scanned the code and now you just have to enter the amount that you would like to donate. So in this case I will just put in 10,000 rupiah a small amount as an experiment here to use their QR code. You can see where the money is going. And you hit confirm pay 10,000.
And now I can use my thumbprint to verify that it’s me.
They’re processing my donation. Payment successful. 10,000 rupiah paid to this charity. Payment detail. If you open this window, you can see all of the details of your payment. And you can share the receipt with that button down there. Nothing could be easier.
I can use QRIS to buy a cold drink from a local store like this.
So, this is a typical sort of shop. Right here there’s the counter. I don’t see a QRIS code yet. But right there, right there on the counter, you can see that they have the QRIS code right there. So that means we can use it in this shop.
Bisa QRIS. Yes. Okay. So, I asked him whether I can pay with QRIS. So, I just hit the pay button at the top. Scan the QR code. There’s the name of the business and the amount I saw on the cash register.
14,000 rupiah confirm
pay
and I can verify the payment with my thumbprint and they’re processing my payment. Payment successful. There we are. And then you just show it to them.
Oh, it’s okay.
And there you have it. I paid for two cartons of milk using QRIS at a local shop. Nothing could be easier. Pro tip, if you just want to tell the clerk or ask the clerk, if you can pay using QRIS, you can just say bisa. Bisa means something like can I or may I or is it possible? So bisa, is it possible to pay with QRIS? And they will nod yes or shake their head no. But all you really need to say is QRIS with a questioning tone and they will know what you mean. Pro tip, in some places when you pay by scanning a QRIS code with your e-wallet, you have to enter the amount that you’re going to pay. So I paid 14,000 rupiah for my two cartons of milk. But you have to be very careful in Indonesia not to enter too many zeros. You can get carried away sometimes. 14000 0. And if you’ve added one extra zero, now you’re paying 140,000, 10 times more. So, and that’s very easy to do when you’re dealing with a foreign currency, something you’re unfamiliar with. So, always be very careful to check the amount that you’ve entered. Before you hit the final payment button, I can use QRIS to buy medicine or personal toiletries from a pharmacy.
This large pharmacy chain, Kimia Farma, is another example of how QRIS is utilized because there’s no sign on the outside that indicates you can use QRIS here. And there’s no sign on the counter either. But this is a different situation where they have little machines at the cash register that displays the QR code.
Bisa QRIS
and there’s my QRIS QR code printed out. Yeah. So, I just scan that. And it has the amount already entered. 14,410 rupiah. Hit pay. Verify the purchase. And it’s processing my payment. Payment successful.
And there you have it. Nothing could be easier. I just had to tell the woman I wanted to pay with QRIS, bisa QRIS, and then she got out a little machine and it printed out a QR code for me to scan. Pro tip, when it comes to security, you can set up your e-wallet any way you like. To confirm the payment you have to enter your PIN or you can set it up to use fingerprints or you can also use facial recognition. It’s your choice. Pro tip, when a business uses their own machine like that to produce a QR code, the amount that you need to pay is automatically inserted into your e-wallet. So, you don’t have to enter the amount. You just have to make sure the amount is correct. Then you hit confirm. Confirm payment. I can use QRIS to buy things at large supermarket chains like Suzuya.
So I’m only making a small purchase. Bisa QRIS
QRIS like a GoPay. Okay. Ya
so they do accept QRIS here. So I just click on the pay button and they produce a QR code with their machine I believe.
So, I’m just waiting to scan the QR code. Oh, they have it here right on the cash register. So, scan the code.
All right. 11,500 rupiah. Pay.
And I verify with my thumbprint. And it’s processing the payment. Payment successful.
Okay. Thank you. And there you have it. I purchased a carton of milk with QRIS. It was a different system. I’ve never encountered that one before where they showed the QR code on the screen of the cash register itself. And then after the payment went through, then they had to go back and enter some sort of a QRIS payment ID number back into the cash register in order to produce this normal receipt. So, it was a little bit slower and less efficient than I’m accustomed to, but eventually it got done. I can use QRIS and an e-wallet app to buy a cold drink or any kind of snack from a convenience store like Indomaret behind me. Now, it’s important to note that Indomaret and Alfamart and a couple of other stores are different from the norm. Normally when you go into a coffee shop, into a restaurant, into a store, they have a QR code, a QRIS code on display. You take out your phone and you scan their code. But here at Indomaret and at Alfamart, it’s the opposite. You put a QR code on your phone and the store clerk takes a scanner. They scan the QR code on your phone. Sounds complicated, but it’s easy. I’ll show you how it works. It won’t be that clear on my phone here, of course, but I’ll put in some screenshots to help you see what I’m doing. So, you start out the normal way. You just click on the Gojek app. It opens up Gojek. And now I want to pay for my purchase. So, I click on the pay button. And that opens up the scanner. And that’s what you do most of the time. You scan their QR code. But if you look down here at the bottom, you see a little box that says show code and then it cycles through Alfamart, Indomaret, and then a generic one. So you click on Indomaret and now your phone, your e-wallet app is going to display your QR code right here. I have to verify that it’s me doing it with my fingerprint. And now there’s the QR code. And when I go into Indomaret and make a purchase, I have to show this code to the store clerk and they scan it. So, it’s the opposite of how it normally works. So, let’s go in and do it. And I have 3 minutes to use this code before it expires. And then you can click on this button on the left to renew it. So, for security reasons, every time you use the e-wallet, it produces a brand new QR code. So, it can only be used one time.
So, let’s go in and make a purchase.
Bisa QRIS.
Ya. GoPay Go.
Okay,
and there you have it. My favorite drink in the world, cold milk, purchased with my GoPay e-wallet.
I don’t know if you noticed it because it happened so quickly, but in this case, the clerk scanned the QR code on my phone. And in this case, she asked me which e-wallet I’m using. And I told her, “GoPay.” And then she entered something on her cash register and then scanned the code. And that was it. It happened pretty much instantaneously. And as always, if you wanted to see the details, you can go into your transaction history, scan to the top, and there it is. I paid 17,200 rupiah for my two cartons of milk, and I can see all of the transaction details.
Pro tip, the QR code is designed to be readable from any angle. So, how you present your phone to the clerk, it doesn’t matter. So, I don’t have to hold it like this. There is no up or down. So, you could even hold it sideways. And what I normally end up doing is I’m holding my phone this way in front of me, but then I just tilt it down to show the present the QR code to them. So from my point of view, it is upside down like this. But that doesn’t matter. The scanner can read it from any orientation. So it doesn’t matter how you hold your phone. Just whatever is comfortable to you. A non-technical pro tip. When you go into a place like Indomaret to top up your e-wallet or make a purchase with your e-wallet as far as you’re concerned and using QRIS and an e-wallet is very fast, very efficient, tends to be pretty smooth. But that’s not always the case for everyone around you. Indomarets and Alfamarts have gotten incredibly complex. All the things they can do, all the things customers go in there to do. And you might have two customers ahead of you, but it’s like each of them is negotiating a second mortgage on their house because whatever they’re doing in front of you is so complicated and takes so long and has so many steps and so many problems. It really is quite extraordinary. So, you’re going in there to make your purchase. So, you have to have your e-wallet all ready to go, but you also have to have a little bit of patience for all the people in front of you because you may end up waiting a very long time. They can be buying a chocolate bar, but it seems to take 15 minutes. They use some sort of an unusual card system for payment that isn’t working because the network is down. You have to call in four different people to consult on the purchase of that one chocolate bar. It can really get out of control sometimes. So, when you head in there to use your e-wallet, bring some patience with you as well. I can use QRIS and an e-wallet to pay for my favorite lunch. Mie ayam bakso here at Kedai Bakso Sakti. And I’m very excited today because for some reason they’ve been closed for like 2 weeks and they just reopened today. Perhaps the blackouts forced them to close as well. But I’m hoping I can get my mie ayam bakso today. Let’s go check it out. I got a table and I ordered my lunch. Mie ayam bakso and I got a iced tea as well. And the cash register, the cash table is over there behind me. And they have a QRIS QR code on display on the table. So that’s how I’m going to pay after my lunch. So lunch is over. Now I’m coming over here to pay. And you can see that they have QRIS code over here that I can scan. Bisa QRIS here. So I open the Gojek app.
Okay. And then I scan there. Oh, it’s scanned from a distance.
Okay. 21,000
right there. Bakso Sakti confirm pay. And then I just have to authorize with my thumbprint. Processing your payment. There you go. Payment successful. There you are. and then he’s going to take a picture of the payment screen. Okay,
all done. No problem.
Some people at the next table were asking me about my YouTube channel and I told them I was making a video about using QRIS, a foreigner using QRIS and an e-wallet. So, there you have it. 21,000 rupiah that was for mie ayam bakso and a bottle of Teh Botol ice basically Teh Botol
pro tip the QR scanner built into these e-wallets are really sensitive so you don’t really have to be that close to the QR code you just sort of wave it in the general direction and it just picks it up instantly the QR code system is quite sensitive and yeah, it can read it from a great distance. But if you’re in an environment where it’s very dark and your scanner is having trouble picking up the code, the GoPay e-wallet, and I believe all e-wallets have this feature, has a little light symbol, like a flashlight symbol on the scanner window. And if you click on that button, it will turn on your phone’s flashlight and it will brighten the QR code and make it easier to read. But it’s pretty rare that you would need that. Maybe if you’re in a Grab car at night and it’s dark inside the car, I can see that feature being very useful. So, it is something to know about that you can boost the lighting inside the e-wallet scanner just by hitting that little flashlight button top right hand corner on a GoPay. Pro tip, big pro tip, these e-wallets in Southeast Asia have gone international. So now that you’ve opened up your GoPay e-wallet here in Indonesia, you could go to neighboring countries such as Malaysia and you could use your Indonesian e-wallet in Malaysia. And that’s because each country has its own standardized QR code system. Here in Indonesia, it’s called QRIS. And in Malaysia, they have an equivalent system called DuitNow. But these QR code payments, the national banks from both countries have made an agreement to link the systems. So you can take an Indonesian e-wallet and you could scan DuitNow QR codes in Malaysia or you could come from Malaysia with a Malaysian e-wallet such as Touch ‘n Go and you can scan QRIS codes here in Indonesia. And in fact, I have an entire video all about that. So, if you happen to be going to Malaysia first and you end up with a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, you can keep using it while you’re here in Indonesia. Just check out my video for all of the tips about how to do that. An example of another category of things you can do with an e-wallet using QRIS, you can buy tickets for the local museums here in Banda Aceh, such as the Museum Aceh. This is the big history and culture museum. It’s a wonderful museum like one of the gems of Banda Aceh in my opinion. It has a Rumah Aceh here on display. lots of very interesting exhibits. And I know that because I came here once before and I bought my ticket using a Malaysian e-wallet called Touch ‘n Go. I wanted to test if you could use Touch ‘n Go to scan a QRIS Code. So now I can kind of do part two. I’m going to buy a ticket for this museum, but I’m going to pay for it with an Indonesian e-wallet with GoPay and let’s see how this works out
Satu orang bisa QRIS.
So, they have the QRIS code here on display for the Museum Aceh. And as always, open click on the pay button to open up the scanner. Scan the code. It’s lima belas ribu. Lima belas ribu. Ah, lima belas ribu. Yeah. Oh, so it’s 15,000
rupiah. So I’ve entered 15,000. Confirm
and pay. And then I use my thumbprint to authenticate.
It’s processing the payment.
Successful. I just paid 15,000 rupiah to the Museum Aceh.
Ya, GoPay this app. Oh, I see. Okay, thank you. So, their machine for printing out tickets isn’t working. So, they gave me a nice handwritten ticket. And since I’m here, I thought I would round out my examples of using QRIS by dropping by the Museum Aceh’s cafe. This is the History Coffee. Really nice place. They make a great cup of coffee and they make a brownie with ice cream. I had that here last time and again I used the Malaysian e-wallet Touch ‘n Go to pay for it and I’m returning for part two today. going to get the same brownie and ice cream, but I’m going to pay with an Indonesian e-wallet. I’m going to try to pay with GoPay scanning their QRIS code. Can I get my Could I have a brownie with ice cream? Ice cream and bisa. QRIS, bisa. Bisa. So, they also accept QRIS here. So, I just hit the pay button, scan the QR code, and there we have it. There’s the name. History Coffee Museum Aceh and berapa harganya 22,000
22,000
confirm.
thumbprint to authenticate and processing my payment. There we go. Nothing could be easier. There you go.
Thank you. Here is okay.
I was heading towards a room on the inside where it was nicely air-conditioned, but it turns out that was a smoking room. I didn’t realize that until I went through the door and closed it behind me and it’s like everybody was smoking. So, I came here to the outdoor area. It’s nice and cool out here. Really nice breeze. And there is what I purchased with my GoPay e-wallet brownie with ice cream. Very, very good.
So, that was a lot of examples of me using an e-wallet to scan QR codes all around Banda Aceh. And I guess you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you see enough benefits in using an e-wallet for you. For me, there are a lot of benefits and I guess some of them are specific to my personality. For one thing, it drives me crazy to be constantly fumbling around looking for change, looking for small bills and correct change. As a foreigner, you’re traveling around the world. You’re always going to ATMs to get your money. And here in Indonesia, when you get your money from an ATM, it produces 100,000 rupiah notes. That’s all you get. And then you go out into the street and you see, oh, there’s a mango juice. I want to buy a fresh mango juice and it’s 5,000 rupiah. Right? So now you pull one of these out of your wallet and you hand the poor guy 100,000 rupiah and he never has enough change. That that’s a chronic problem I find in Sumatra. Nobody has change. Not the small fruit seller. Even if you go into Indomaret, a big popular chain store, you’re you go in there to just to buy a couple of items, you hand over 100,000 rupiah note, they don’t have enough change in the till. And you end up in this long conversation, they’re trying to find change. Do you have change? Out on the street, they’ll find children like from the business owner and they’ll send their children off to the neighboring businesses waving your 100,000 rupiah note and like, oh, can you break this? Can you break it? And then you wait there for 10 minutes, they finally come back with enough change and then you’ve cleaned them out for the whole day. And so I often walk right by fruit stalls and I won’t buy anything because I don’t want to bother them with this whole correct change business. And there’s also this idea of like a language barrier that when you show up in a place and they’re trying to tell you how much the bill is or how much you have to pay. And using an e-wallet kind of sidesteps a lot of that language barrier. Quite often the amount just shows up in your e-wallet automatically. You don’t even have to ask how much is it or learn Indonesian to figure out what they’re saying. Also even if you do go into Indomaret and you buy something and they might have enough change, but they don’t have the exact correct bills. So then they say to you, “Oh, do you have like one do you have 1,000 or 3,000? Do you have some coins?” Because they want to make the amount they give you an even number. So instead of handing them a 100,000 rupiah, you hand them 100,000 and three rupiah so that they can give you 50,000 back. You see what I mean? So now they’re trying to ask you like, “Oh, do you have 3,000 rupiah?” And then you don’t know what they’re saying. There’s so much confusion. And using an e-wallet just wipes all that out. You don’t have to worry about small change, getting change, correct change. Plus, you know, this is just a weird Planet Doug thing. I guess the bills in Indonesia are kind of hard to sort through. So, even if you have small bills, at the moment, I only have a bunch of 2,000 rupiah notes, but they can often be quite crumpled and hard to get out of your wallet. And you end up you’re trying to sort through your wallet to find a 5,000 rupiah note, a 10,000. They all kind of look the same because they’re older and the coloring has worn off. The colors are very similar. Anyway, so you end up pulling out this big wad of money and then you’re like trying to find the bills in there and then you’re dropping money and I don’t know, it’s just you do that five times a day. It ends up being very stressful. and an e-wallet kind of if you can use one just reduces all of that friction, all of that ongoing problem. And I really that’s my main reason for using an e-wallet basically. And I think using an e-wallet adds a certain level of security. So, this might seem odd to you, but hang with me here that when you are getting money out of your wallet, and as I said, you’re sort of fumbling around with all this these huge notes like 100,000, 50,000, 10,000, they’re all the same color, they’re all crumpled and dirty. It’s very easy to drop a bunch of money. Like, people lose money all the time. And then while you’re fiddling around with this bunch of dirty notes, you you have a tendency to put your wallet down like on the counter because you need both hands to fiddle through this and then you walk away and you forgot your wallet and losing your wallet like dropping it. You don’t hear it when it hits the ground. So, as you’re fumbling around with your wallet, you might accidentally it falls to the ground and you don’t notice it because it doesn’t make a sound. If you’re using an e-wallet on your phone, it’s like your phones are glued to your hands. You don’t let go of them. And if you do happen to drop it, it makes a loud bang. It crashes against and say, “Oh, my phone. I forgot I dropped my phone.” You can drop your wallet and not notice in a crowded market. You can never drop your phone. You’re always going to notice. And I don’t know, it just feels like the phone is welded to your hand in a way that your wallet is not. Plus, and people shouldn’t do this, but a lot of people keep credit cards, debit cards, driver’s licenses, ID of all kind. They keep all of that in their wallet even when they’re traveling overseas. And I mean, that’s a major red flag. You should never ever do that. I clean out my wallet entirely so that it contains only the cash I need for today because you just learn that over time. But again and again and again on YouTube, I see stories from people where they talk about how their wallet was stolen or they lost their wallet and they lost all their ID with it. They have no ATM card, no credit card, no ID because they kept all of that in their wallet. So, if you use your wallet all day long to pay with cash, you’re risking losing your wallet and all the documentation, all the credit cards, bank cards in your wallet. And if you’re using an e-wallet instead, you don’t have that risk. You don’t have credit cards, you don’t have bank cards, you don’t have ID, you know, in your phone. So, I think that adds a little bit of security. Plus, with an e-wallet, you don’t have to carry around as much cash. So, in my case, for example, I withdraw money from the ATM, but then I take that money and I put it into my e-wallet. I’m not carrying around cash. I’m just carrying around my phone. So, that reduces the security risk on my phone as well. Another big advantage to using an e-wallet with QRIS is that sometimes they don’t even accept cash anymore. This is quite common when it comes to transportation and official places. I remember landing at the airport in Medan one time. This was before I became an e-wallet expert and I wanted to take the train from Kualanamu airport into downtown, but I couldn’t buy a ticket because the only way to buy a ticket was with cashless methods. You had to have some kind of a NFC enabled credit card or debit card or an e-wallet. And at that time, I didn’t have anything. I was used to just paying with money. And I was stuck. I was there at the train station. I want to buy a train ticket and they say, “Oh, we don’t accept cash.” So, it’s like, well, now you’re stuck. So, even if you don’t see a big benefit to an e-wallet, like you’re not going to use it all day every day like I do, it’s still good to download one, open an account, and put in a little bit of money just for those occasional moments when they don’t accept cash. You come up to a ferry terminal. You want to get on the boat to cross the river and you go up to the ticket window or like an automated kiosk and it’s like, oh, they don’t accept money. Now, what do I do? Ah, for those rare occasions, you’ve got your e-wallet and it’s going to save you in all those in all those moments. Another big advantage to having an e-wallet and knowing how to scan QRIS codes is that there are many situations where you can use it online. All of my examples were out in the physical world making purchases at actual brick and mortar stores, places like that. But another huge category of use for QRIS and e-wallets is online. So, you can do all kinds of things once you have an e-wallet because when you think about it, a QRIS code, it doesn’t have to be displayed on a physical sign. It can be displayed on a website, on your laptop, on a phone screen. So, for example, if you are buying a train ticket, you can you can buy the train ticket online using the local train station app and then you pay for it online with QRIS. Say you want to go attend a a football match, the local team is having a big match at a stadium, you can buy the ticket online and you can pay for it by scanning a QRIS code. And more and more there are cases like that. You can pay for hotel rooms online by scanning a QRIS code. You can shop on Lazada, have things to you know ship to your hotel room and you just pay for it online by scanning a QRIS code that they put up on the screen for you. So there are countless situations, maybe even more opportunities for using QRIS online than there are in the real world. So that that’s another big advantage for travelers in particular to getting an e-wallet and learning how to use the whole QRIS system. The final advantage I’ll bring up is not something I’m personally concerned about, but a lot of people are and and perhaps justifiably so, and that’s the question of hygiene. And this question of hygiene came about during the pandemic, of course. when social distancing was all the rage and everybody was told to keep six feet away from everybody else. And that’s when e-wallets had this tremendous surge in popularity because paying with an e-wallet was contactless. You go into a store and you’re told to stay 6 ft away from the store clerk. I was in Thailand at the time and a lot of the stores in my town, they won’t they wouldn’t even let you inside, right? They put up a big barrier outside the store. You can’t even physically go inside anymore and you have to stand far away from the clerk and tell them what you want to buy. They go into the store, get it, put it on a table, and then they back away, you know, like you’re dealing with something very, very dangerous. And then you go up and get your purchase. And in those situations, nobody wanted to be handing across old dirty money that all day long this money gets handed from one person to the next person to the next and it sits inside my wallet very hot and humid in my back pocket. So, if you are concerned about the hygiene aspect of constantly handling dirty money, then an e-wallet can give you some peace of mind that you don’t actually have to hand over money anymore. You just stand back, scan the QR code, and you’re done. So, hygiene could be another advantage to using an e-wallet. At this point, I don’t know if I’ve convinced you that you should give e-wallets and QRIS a try, but if I have, what do you do next? Well, of course, the first thing you need to do is get an e-wallet. I’ve already talked about how there are a variety of e-wallets to choose from. You can look into that for yourself and decide that OVO is better for you or DANA or even something from Grab. I believe Grab Pay or you could follow my suggestion and just start with GoPay which is part of Gojek. But now you’ve made your choice which e-wallet you’re going to use. Where do you get them from? Well, at least that’s very, very simple. Particularly where GoPay is concerned. You just go onto your smartphone, go to the Google Play Store or to the Apple Store, look for Gojek and you’ll find the app very easily. Download it to your phone and open an account. And the amazing thing about GoPay and Gojek that I discovered which I didn’t realize is how easy it is to open an account. All I needed to do, and I’m going to show you in a minute exactly how to do it. I when I opened my account, I recorded my phone screen. So, I have an onscreen recording as I go through the steps and you can watch that if you wish. But what I learned is that to open a Gojek account, a GoPay e-wallet, all you need is a local phone number, an Indonesian phone number and a Google account. So you essentially enter your phone number and then you put in your name and an email address and you’re done. The account is open. They send you a security code, of course, an OTP. They send an OTP to that phone number. You enter that OTP into the app and you’re done. So, you don’t need to take a picture of your passport. You don’t have to upload any documents. You don’t have to prove your identity in any way, which makes it so fast and efficient. Phone number, name, email, OTP code, you’re done. And as I said, I’ll show you how you do all of that step by step. though just as a just as an addition here when you do that you’ve opened GoPay basic they don’t call it that but that’s basic that’s the basic account which has a relatively low balance that you can carry that’s good enough for travelers I think but if you are a power user you can get GoPay plus and if you sign up for GoPay plus then you have to prove your ID. It’s a little bit more rigorous. You have to do things like upload a copy of your passport, take a selfie photo. I think we’ve all done that in the past with various online accounts. I think they call that KYC, right? Know your customer. But to get GoPay basic, you don’t need to do any of that. But if you want GoPay plus, then you have to go to the KYC know your customer procedure. But you don’t need to do that at all. I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up. So, here is how you go through the steps of opening an account. I’ve downloaded the Gojek app from the Google Play Store and there it is on my phone. So, all you do, of course, is click on it, and that will bring you to the sign up page. Welcome to Gojek, your go-to app for a hassle-free life. And you can either log in if you already have an account. And I don’t at this point, so I click the second option. I’m new. Sign me up. And here you enter your phone number. And they will send you a security code, I assume, that you’re going to have to enter. And you can see that it starts with the Indonesian code plus 62. That’s the Indonesian number code. And then you enter in your local mobile number, which I’m going to do right now. So, I’ve entered my phone number and it looks like I can receive my OTP via SMS or WhatsApp. I’m going to choose what I think is the more straightforward way via SMS. Let’s see how that works. So, it says they have sent the OTP to my phone number and I wait for it to arrive and then I will enter it. Looks like I only have 1 minute to do it. My code has arrived. Now I’m going to enter it.
And then you go through the procedure of choosing it looks like choosing a Google account and entering your name.
Gojek needs to know your location. So you give it permission. May we access your location? And now it’s asking where am I, Indonesia or Singapore? I’m in Indonesia. And now they’re offering me some kind of a discount on one of these services. Again, I’m going to keep things very, very simple. So, I’m going to skip the discount. Skip the treat. And that’s it. I have my account. There was no password required because essentially the security is controlled by sending you a OTP to your phone number which of course nobody else should have access to. So all I had to do was put in my Google account and my phone number and then the OTP code and my name. And that’s all I had to do to open a Gojek account. I’ve heard a lot of people refer to Gojek as a super app and that’s kind of fitting because the full app can do a lot. So, for example, here on the menu, you’ve got GoRide. And with GoRide, of course, you can travel all over the city by motorcycle. And then there’s GoCar where you can book a car to take you somewhere. You’ve also got GoFood. So with GoFood, you can order food deliveries to your hotel or to your home. GoSend is sending packages somewhere. I’ve never used GoSend and it’s asking me now how I would use it. So I would click on personal needs. And here we are in the GoSend section of GoMart for shopping for household items, groceries, food, medicine, anything like that. GoTransit. That’s an interesting one because here in Banda Aceh there is no GoTransit yet. So that option is not available here in Banda Aceh. But depending on the city in Indonesia, it could be there. But what I would use the app for most of the time is to scan a QRIS code and pay. And if you look at the main window there up at the top, you can see that I have zero credit, zero rupiah. But if I did have money in my account, I could click on that little pay button and that would open up a scanner. And then you would aim this scanner at the QR code at the restaurant or at the shop or cafe wherever you are. And then of course you process the payment as I’ve shown in this video. All right. So, you’ve downloaded your e-wallet, you’ve opened an account, and now you’re staring at that balance, and the balance still says zero, and you can’t use your e-wallet until you put some money into it. So, how do you do that? Here, I will show you exactly how that happens in the real world. So, you’ve just downloaded your very first e-wallet and you’ve opened an account and you’re very excited to go out into Indonesia and start using it. But, of course, you can’t use it until you put money into your e-wallet. I mean, think about it. It’s just like a regular wallet. Maybe you got a brand new wallet for Father’s Day and you’re very happy to get this wallet, but it doesn’t do you any good until you put some money into it. So, how do you put money into your e-wallet? That’s a little bit of a complicated question in a way because for an Indonesian, there are multiple ways to add money. You can link, for example, your bank account to your e-wallet, and transfer money from your bank account into your e-wallet, from debit cards into your e-wallet, from credit cards into your e-wallet. But that’s for Indonesians. For foreigners, it’s actually more limited, but in a way that makes it easier because the most basic way to do it, the easiest way to do it is probably your only real option, and that is to top up your e-wallet at a convenience store like Indomaret or Alfamart. So, I’m sitting here outside of Indomaret because I need to top up my e-wallet. And while I do it, I can show you how it’s done. Of course, the first thing you need to do, as always, is open your e-wallet. So, I’m going to click on Gojek. Opening up the Gojek super app. And right here, you see the usual pay button, but beside it, there’s another button with a plus symbol that says top up. So, you click on top up.
And here you see all of your options. And at the very top is what I talked about. Those are all the bank accounts. So a local person who has a bank account can transfer money that way. But chances are you can’t do that. So you scroll down to where it says with cash. So you can top up with cash at your nearest minimart or agent. And what I normally do and the way that I’m accustomed to is doing it at Indomaret. Right there you can see the logo for the Indomaret convenience store. So I click on Indomaret and then it asks me how much would I like to top up. So, I’m going to select 500,000 rupiah right here on the you can enter the numbers I think whatever number you want or you can have a pre-selected amount. I’m going to select 500,000 rupiah. So, now the number has been entered and down at the bottom confirm and top up and you see that they added a 1,000 rupiah administrative fee. So I click on confirm and top up and I get a barcode. So now what I have to do is go into the store basically present my phone to the store clerk. They are going to scan the barcode. I give them the money 500,000 rupiah and then that amount will be added automatically to my e-wallet. So, let’s go inside and do that. And there are some helpful instructions down here at the bottom. Step one, show the barcode to the cashier. Step two, pay your top up amount and administrative fee with cash. Step three, once your payment is confirmed, the top up should be received within 24 hours. In my experience, the top up is pretty much instantaneous. The money appears in my e-wallet within a minute of confirming the payment. So, let’s see what happens this time.
Top up. Ya. GoPay.
Ya.
Lima.
Thank you.
And there you have it. I have 500,000 rupiah in my GoPay e-wallet which as I said that particular e-wallet is part of the Gojek super app and then all the details are here and I had to pay 1,000 rupiah in in cash as an administrative fee all done and there are a couple of different ways you can confirm that the transaction was successful the easiest of course is just to look at your balance. And my balance here, it now says 549,000
rupiah. So, I’ve added 500,000 rupiah to my e-wallet. And if I just click on the balance, it opens up my transaction history. And if I scroll all the way to the top there, you can see my transactions for today. 500,000 GoPay saldo GoPay top up. And if you want to see the precise details for that transaction, you just click on it. And there you have all of the information, the time, the date, transaction ID, order number, and the amount. And up here at the top also it lists the amount and where the transaction where the top up took place via Indomaret. Pro tip. I’ve mentioned a number of times that I’m using the GoPay e-wallet and yet I keep clicking on an app called Gojek. So what’s going on there? The thing is that the e-wallet itself is called GoPay but it is embedded inside the Gojek super app and the Gojek super app has all kinds of features. There’s things like GoRide for booking a motorcycle or a car. There’s GoFood go everything but there’s also GoPay the e-wallet. But if you want to, you can download a separate e-wallet app. So you can download Gojek and use GoPay from right inside Gojek. I think that’s the easiest way to go about it and the simplest. But if you want to, you can also download an app called GoPay. So it is the standalone e-wallet app for Gojek called GoPay. So I can click on Gojek or I can click on GoPay. And if I open up GoPay it is sort of a cleaner simpler app because it only contains the e-wallet but and this is the key point the balance in GoPay is shared with Gojek. It’s exactly the same account, but you’re just coming at it from a different direction. So, even though I added 500,000 rupiah to Gojek, you’ll notice that GoPay also has the 500,000 rupiah. It’s the same app. It just looks a little bit different and the balance is shared across them. I hope that makes sense. But for a beginner, what I would recommend is just download Gojek and all you have to do is click on the pay button and go from there. If you’re a bit of a power user and you want to know everything, then you can also download the GoPay app and link it to Gojek and then you can use either one depending on your mood. And now that you’ve topped up your e-wallet and you have money in it, you’re all set to go out into Indonesia and go traveling and use all the advantages, all the conveniences of the QRIS system. And now that I’ve reached the end of the video, what is my conclusion? I mean, I think my conclusion is pretty obvious. I think e-wallets are the wave of the future. And if you don’t jump on board, you’re going to be left behind. At least in this part of the world. So why not? Why not get ahead of the curve? Even if you think you may not use it, you’re here. You got some time in your hotel, you’ve got your phone, you’ve got Wi-Fi, download an e-wallet app, open an account, and then put some money in it. Just, you know, dip your toe in the water, see how you like it. You may end up loving it. you may end up using your old payment systems. You’re comfortable with how you do things now. That’s absolutely understandable. And the one caveat I’ll end the video with, and I’ve realized that in Banda Aceh in particular is that as amazing it is to use an e-wallet and QRIS, it is heavily heavily technology dependent. It requires many many different pieces of technology. You’ve got the smartphone, your SIM card, data, mobile, internet, your phone has to have battery. QRIS has to be up and running. The the business where you’re scanning their QRIS code, they have to have it set up properly. There are so many links in the chain in terms of technology, so many bits and pieces that there are a lot of points for failure. And when it fails, it can be so frustrating. And I learned that here in particular because even though I didn’t show it in the video, we’ve had a there was a big storm came through Southeast Asia recently and here in Aceh province in particular. There was heavy flooding and landslides and it knocked out the power for big regions of Aceh province and it’s taken a long time for the electricity come back to come back. So very often when I was out trying to use my e-wallet it would fail because the power is gone and there was no mobile internet. So once one of those pieces disappears, the entire thing collapses and you can’t use your e-wallet anymore. So it is a little bit fragile in terms of how much technology is involved. Every piece of the chain has to be working properly. And if everything’s flowing nicely, everything works great. But if the power goes out, well then you better have some money in your wallet because you’ve got to have money in your wallet as a fall back for when the technology fails. And the final point I guess I’ll end with this is something I didn’t talk about a lot is that these e-wallets have gone international and that’s a key feature of them. I’ve mainly been focusing on the perspective of a foreigner coming to Indonesia for a trip and using the Indonesian e-wallet in Indonesia. But as more and more countries are linking their e-wallet systems, you can now take your Indonesian e-wallet to other countries or you can take your Malaysian e-wallet to other countries. And it’s going global basically. And I think in the future, you’re only going to see e-wallets become more and more common everywhere around the world. So again, you might as well might as well get on board now and start start using QRIS here in Indonesia and yeah, get on board the QRIS train. So that’s it. Video is done. I’m shutting down now. I hope that helped you out a little bit. And as always, I’ll see you in the next video.