Indonesia’s Push for Trade in Local Currencies and What It Means for India
Prof. Tridivesh Singh Maini Assistant Professor of Diplomatic Practice, JSIA, OP Jindal Global University Indonesia’s Push for Trade in Local Currencies and What It Means for India Indonesia has spent the last several years encouraging its trade and investment partners to settle in local currencies instead of the US dollar. Two instruments carry most of this effort. The Local Currency Transaction (LCT) framework allows businesses in Indonesia and in partner countries to invoice and settle trade and investment flows in their own currencies, so that these transactions no longer have to pass through the dollar. The Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS) is a QR payment standard introduced by Bank Indonesia, and it is now being extended to cross-border payments as part of the same infrastructure (Isaac, 2026). The numbers have moved quickly. Bank Indonesia’s Governor, Destry Damayanti, has put the expected value of LCT transactions in 2026 at roughly US$55 billion, more than twice the figure for 2025 (GNA, 2026). India is one of the partners Jakarta is working to bring further into the system. The two countries signed a central bank agreement on local currency settlement in 2024, and in July 2026 their leaders announced that India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and QRIS would be linked. This article looks at how the LCT framework has developed, where India fits, how the effort relates to the wider debate among BRICS members about reducing dollar dependence, and what limits remain. The argument is that local currency settlement is better understood as a way of widening options and managing risk than as a break with the dollar, and that India and Indonesia have good reasons to treat it in that way. The LCT Framework and QRIS Indonesia introduced the LCT framework in 2018 (Isaac, 2026). Bank Indonesia defines LCT as the bilateral settlement of transactions using each party’s home-country currency (Bank Indonesia, 2025). The framework covers a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, electricity, gas, transportation, trade, and services. Its policy design rests on three pillars: flexible foreign exchange regulation, stronger monitoring and supervision, and a network of Appointed Cross Currency Dealers, which are the banks that quote and settle between rupiah and partner currencies (Isaac, 2026). The partner list has grown in steps. By the end of 2025, Indonesia had LCT arrangements with Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, China, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates (Isaac, 2026). Bank Indonesia added South Korea in September 2024 and the UAE in January 2025, widened its arrangements with Malaysia and Thailand to cover portfolio investment from March 2025, and signed a memorandum of understanding with China (Bank Indonesia, 2025). Governor Damayanti has described the current partner group in simple terms: We are currently collaborating with about six to seven countries, using our respective local currencies for transactions with these key partners. This year, we estimate the total value of these transactions will reach US$55 billion, a significant increase from approximately US$25 billion last year. (Antara, 2026a) The effort is coordinated across government. A national LCT task force brings together Bank Indonesia, the economic affairs ministry, the financial services authority, and the ministries of finance, industry, trade, state-owned enterprises, and foreign affairs, among others (Bank Indonesia, 2025). Officials have also asked ministries to push LCT use in mining, minerals, oil and gas, and agriculture (Bank Indonesia, 2025). QRIS as Payment Infrastructure QRIS works on a different layer from LCT. LCT handles settlement between businesses and between banks, while QRIS lets individuals and small merchants pay by scanning a code. Reporting on Bank Indonesia’s work treats QRIS as part of the infrastructure that supports LCT and its regional rollout (Isaac, 2026). The practical effect is that a visitor from a partner country can pay a street vendor in Indonesia from a home-country payment app, with the conversion handled between the two payment systems and not through a third currency. This is the use case Indonesia and India now hope to bring into operation. Growth in Transaction Volumes Bank Indonesia reported that LCT transactions totaled US$11.7 billion in the first half of 2025, compared with US$4.702 billion in the first half of 2024. The number of customers using LCT rose by about 45% over the same period (Bank Indonesia, 2025). Growth continued into 2026. Transactions in January and February 2026 came to about US$8.45 billion, against US$3.21 billion a year earlier, an increase of roughly 163%. The average number of monthly LCT users rose from 9,720 in 2025 to 16,030 in 2026 (Isaac, 2026). One report states that LCT trade reached US$49 billion by August 2026, which would be close to double the US$25.7 billion recorded for the whole of 2025 (NewKerala, 2026). The Governor’s own forecast, given at a forum in Jakarta on October 26, is that the year will end at US$55 billion, again more than double the roughly US$25 billion of 2025 (GNA, 2026). China has contributed to this rise, but Indonesia has also been working to increase local currency trade with Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, and the UAE (Bank Indonesia, 2025; Isaac, 2026). A Note on the Figures These numbers should be read with some care. The reports cover different periods, and they do not always say whether they count trade only or also investment and other flows. A cumulative figure of US$49 billion by August and a full-year forecast of US$55 billion would imply a slower pace in the last four months of the year than in the first eight, which suggests that the two figures are not measured on exactly the same basis. The direction is clear, since every source shows LCT volumes rising sharply, but the exact level depends on which series is used. India and Indonesia: From Agreement to Operation The 2024 Memorandum of Understanding India and Indonesia have been strengthening their economic and strategic relationship for some time, and local currency trade has become one part of that effort. On March 7, 2024, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Bank Indonesia signed a

















