Bank Rakyat plans to collaborate with Bank Rakyat Indonesia

Bank Rakyat president, Datuk Mustafha Abd Razak, said via the collaboration, both banks would provide banking services to customers in the two countries.

"For example, Indonesian workers in Malaysia can become BRI's customers and use services offered by Bank Rakyat in Malaysia for remittances and withdrawals.

"The same goes for Malaysian students and workers in Indonesia...they can become customers of Bank Rakyat and use similar services offered by BRI," he said to reporters here today.

However, he said the method of cooperation would only be decided in detail by a working committee between the two banks after getting approvals from the two countries' respective central banks later.

He said this after attending a meeting and discussion between the management teams of Bank Rakyat and BRI here, which was also attended by Minister of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Datuk Seri Hasan Malek and BRI President Director Asmawi Syam.

Mustafha said if the collaboration materialised, it would give benefits to the rakyat of both countries, especially the Indonesian workforce in Malaysia which now totals 2.5 million, to undertake various financial and banking transactions.

Besides that, he said there were 20,000 automated teller machines across Indonesia that could be used by Malaysians who are in or visiting the republic to carry out their financial transactions.

Meanwhile, BRI in a press statement said Malaysia is a country that has the largest remittance transactions to Indonesia, with transactions of US$2.54 billion in 2014.

The statement said with a collaboration between the two banks in the future, remittances from Malaysia could be done via a network of 145 Bank Rakyat branches.

The cooperation would also enable Indonesian workers in Malaysia to open accounts with BRI and facilitate the transfer of their wages to families through money remittance services which are easier and faster by using services provided by Bank Rakyat in Malaysia.