Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, the Indonesian banking regulator and central bank, has promised banks that it is going to loosen up various rules to do with credit cards, the idea being to promote cashless transactions as a way of helping people of all incomes avoid the economic fallout of the Coronavirus.

Perry Warjiyo, the bank's governor, told reporters this week that he was going to reduce penalties for late payment and maximum interest rates. He said that he thought that this would speed up the rate of transactions and help Indonesia's depressed economy.

Underlying this initiative is the desire of governments all over the world to keep an ever closer eye on their populations' monetary habits and, above all, to induce them to abandon cash in favour of more observable media of payment. The governor told reporters: “This is aimed at expanding the use of cashless transactions to mitigate the COVID-19 impacts,” but the Indonesian Government has been trying for a long time to reduce people's use cash, with the surveillance of its subjects as its overt aim.

Bloomberg reports that in April 2018 the authorities (spearheaded by the national financial surveillance unit) were thinking of drawing up a Bill to limit cash transactions by individuals to 100 million rupiah ($6,500) each day. The news report anticipated that "a buyer of a Honda City sedan, priced at about 300 million rupiah [US$19,500] in Jakarta, will have to swipe a credit card or use a bank transfer to avoid being fined or possibly even tried for prison."

In the same year, Bank Indonesia banned everyone except a few select financial institutions to bring banknotes to the value of 1 billion rupiah (US$65,000) into the country.