Indonesia is often described as having leapfrogged cards and gone straight to QR. That is accurate about the infrastructure and misleading about a foreign visitor's experience of it, because the question is not whether the merchant accepts QRIS. It is whether your app can talk to it.
What QRIS is and how big it is
Bank Indonesia describes QRIS as the QR payment code it introduced to facilitate payment transactions in Indonesia, developed and administered together with the payment system industry. The per-transaction ceiling is Rp 10,000,000.
Scale as of June 2026: 65.77 million users and 44.86 million merchants, of which 96.68 percent are micro, small or medium enterprises. Transactions in the first half of 2026 came to 12.55 billion, described by the central bank as double the same period in 2025.
Two Bank Indonesia press releases two months apart give the transaction value for that same period as Rp 1.12 quadrillion and as roughly Rp 600.7 trillion. Both are official, the gap is nearly twofold, and neither is quoted here as settled. For the neighbouring topic, see how Indonesian prices are structured.
Whether your app works depends on your country
Bank Indonesia's cross-border page documents three live inbound linkages, and the launch dates matter because each was announced separately.
Thailand started as a pilot on 17 August 2021 and moved to full implementation on 29 August 2022, with 76 payment service providers from both countries. Malaysia's DuitNow QR linkage launched commercially on 8 May 2023, with eighteen Malaysian providers listed. Singapore's NETS linkage launched on 17 November 2023, with OCBC, UOB and DBS PayLah! named.
Japan appears on the same page but in the other direction: the August 2025 announcement covers Indonesians scanning JPQR Global in Japan, and the entry for Japanese providers and limits reads "TBA". No other country appears at all.
The procedure, where it works, is the ordinary one: open the app, scan, enter the amount in rupiah, confirm the converted amount in your own currency, enter your PIN.
There is no tourist QRIS
This is worth stating directly, because the phrase circulates. No Bank Indonesia page, press release or regulation establishing a scheme called QRIS Turis could be found.
The official sub-schemes that do exist are easy to mistake for it: QRIS Antarnegara is the cross-border one above, QRIS TUNTAS covers cash withdrawal, transfer and deposit, and QRIS TAP is the contactless variant. A visitor outside the three linked countries has no shortcut.
Registering an Indonesian wallet with a passport
The other route is documented in the providers' own terms. GoPay states that the identity document is an eKTP for Indonesian citizens or a passport for foreign nationals, with one document permitted per account. OVO's terms accept a photo of the identity page of a passport for the Premier upgrade. DANA states that a non-Indonesian needs a passport issued by their country of origin for a Premium account.
Balance ceilings follow a common pattern: roughly Rp 2,000,000 unverified and Rp 20,000,000 verified, which OVO notes may move with central bank rules. LinkAja's upgrade page mentions only an Indonesian KTP and its verification runs against government ID records, so passport acceptance there is unconfirmed. A separate guide here takes up the retail chains you will meet.
Cards, and why the ATM numbers are the real signal
Bank Indonesia's July 2026 payment statistics show 333 million ATM and debit cards in circulation against 18.15 million credit cards. Within the ATM and debit total, cash withdrawals accounted for Rp 364,468 billion of transaction value while retail purchases accounted for Rp 41,758 billion.
That ratio is the most useful single fact here. Cards exist in enormous numbers and are used overwhelmingly to obtain cash rather than to pay directly. Currency in circulation was growing 15.10 percent year on year in July 2026, alongside all that QRIS growth.
What you are not charged
Surcharging on QRIS is prohibited. Bank Indonesia states that the merchant discount rate is borne by the merchant and may not be passed to the consumer, and publishes the schedule: zero for micro merchants up to Rp 500,000, 0.3 percent above that for micro, 0.7 percent for small, medium and large merchants, 0.4 percent at fuel stations.
From 1 October 2026 the zero rate extends to all merchant categories for transactions up to Rp 100,000.
Cash you may carry across the border
Two separate rules apply and they are different in kind. Customs requires a report when you carry cash or other payment instruments worth at least Rp 100,000,000 or the foreign-currency equivalent, declared on the customs form. Non-declaration carries a penalty of 10 percent of the amount, capped at Rp 300,000,000 and taken directly from the funds.
Separately, Bank Indonesia regulation 19/7/PBI/2017, effective 5 March 2018, provides that carrying foreign banknotes worth at least the equivalent of Rp 1,000,000,000 into or out of Indonesian customs territory requires written central bank approval, and at that threshold only banks and licensed money changers may do it at all. We cover Bali's tourist levy in a separate guide.
What this guide does not cover
Foreign-card ATM withdrawal fees and daily caps are not stated, because Bank Indonesia publishes none; they are set by individual banks. ATM note denominations are likewise unpublished. The rule on surcharging debit and credit cards, as distinct from QRIS, could not be verified. Whether a foreign mobile number completes e-wallet registration is not addressed in the providers' published terms, and LinkAja's acceptance of a passport is unconfirmed. ShopeePay's requirements could not be retrieved. The specific carriage rule for rupiah banknotes, as distinct from foreign currency, refers to an implementing regulation that could not be obtained. Exchange rates and where to change money are outside scope.