🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Indonesia is using digital policy to answer a weaker market

• PIDI, the Indonesia Digital Innovation Center, launched after Indonesian fintech funding fell 83% year over year in 2025 1.
• The state-backed program sets up a talent pipeline and moves the sector away from the venture-funded “growth at all costs” period toward a steadier, regulated digital economy 2.
• QRIS is also expanding across borders. That move builds on a large home market and sits alongside local-currency settlement plans that cut some dependence on the US dollar 3.

Digital finance is turning into everyday infrastructure

• Indonesia’s digital finance system is moving past product testing into a broad circulation network that works as economic infrastructure 4.
• QRIS expansion could help more of the country’s 65 million micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), many of which do not take international cards, reach foreign tourists. That market brought in about US$18.9 billion in 2025 3.
• The network links partners including China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. It lets some retail payments settle directly in local currencies, which lowers use of the US dollar in some cross-border retail transactions 5.