Banking & Money
Immediately following the financial crisis of the late 1990s that devastated markets and economies in the region, the Indonesian banking system was in utter disarray. At the time of this writing, the system claims to be sorting itself out a bit. Nevertheless, for the new resident, banking in Indonesia can still be a labyrinthine mystery.
So confusing is it that, at any given moment, it is difficult even to ascertain how many banks are actually operating in Indonesia. Below is a partial list, not to be considered definitive or up to date, of banks that are operating in the archipelago.
With the fraud and embezzlement investigations and trials of senior officials at the Bank Indonesia (the nation's central bank) still underway, it is likely that the chaos will continue for some time.
What follows, therefore, can only be considered observations and tips; not legal advice.
Personal Banking
Checks are an exceedingly rare species in Indonesia; where they are heard of, they are discouraged. It can take up to three months to get a foreign check cashed in an Indonesian bank, and that's assuming you have equivalent funds on deposit. Pretty much everything outside of commercial banking is done with cash, electronic transfers or credit cards.
If you are being paid locally, most companies prefer to transfer your money directly to your account. The other best option is to have it paid in cash.
For your day-to-day needs, you'll need to open a local bank account. Your best bet is probably BCA (Bank of Central Asia), with Bank Mandiri coming in second. BCA, at least in Jakarta, seems to have the most ATMs, and more retail outlets use BCA debit cards. For some reason, the debit withdrawal system isn't integrated; you need to have a card for the specific bank the store uses.
Opening your account
One thing you'll soon discover is that, while obdurate behavior on the part of officials of all sorts, and particularly of bank employees, is justified by policy, or "rules", there really aren't any. Or at least anything consistent. One bank employee will tell you that you can't open an account unless you have an Indonesian ID card. Another at the same bank will demand a passport, some will tell you that you need Indonesian citizenship or a driver's licence, while others insist on a KITAS. The consensus seems to be that you need a KITAS; just bring everything you have and go from person to person until you find one who demands what you can provide.
And that is where you'll run into difficulty. There is no tradition of customer service in Indonesia, so petty officials, particularly in banks, see their primary function as creating impediments. They will make you line up (for hours, even) while they eat lunch and then sleep at their desks. When it is finally your turn, they will do everything of which their creative imaginations can conceive to turn down whatever request you are making. Keep smiling and thanking them. Even when they walk you through the completion of countless redundant forms requiring utterly irrelevant information, then they'll scrutinize the results and reject them because you filled them in with blue, rather than black, ink. Or the reverse.
Eventually, you may get through it and you will be permitted to give them your money. You will have to come back in a few weeks to get your ATM card, longer if you want it to generate English language instructions and dialogue on the ATM screens. That will entail more queuing and proof of identity. Then, if you intend to pay bills electronically, you'll need to travel to some other obscure branch to order the electronic "key." Then you'll need to come back to pick it up.
Once you're set up, though, it seems to run reasonably well, as long as you physically avoid the bank itself.
You cannot make deposits at most ATMs, but you can transfer funds from your account to pay most bills. Although you can actually make withdrawals from your account from some other banks' ATMs, the service charges are high and the service is limited.
If you have money transferred to your local account from a foreign country, expect delays and red tape. Most long-term expats are convinced that the local banks use incoming transfers to speculate on currency fluctuations; assume that your funds will be exchanged at the lowest possible rate plus a significant surcharge.
The best advice is to keep it simple; don't do anything that could require following up in person, as you will find no one is accountable for anything. So use cash for everything you can, and an off-shore VISA or MasterCard for hotels and airline tickets (expect a surcharge of up to 3 percent), and the ATM for accessing daily cash. For any significant money, or for savings and investments, you're best to consider off-shore financial services from your home country or, perhaps, Singapore.
Contributor: Patrick Guntensperger
Want to make a comment? Login or Register.