Verifiable Eligibility for Micro-Enterprises

Indonesia runs dozens of support programs for micro and small enterprises: subsidised three-kilogram LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) canisters reserved for poor households and micro-businesses, interest subsidies under KUR (Kredit Usaha Rakyat, the People's Business Credit scheme), BPUM cash grants (Bantuan Produktif Usaha Mikro, Micro-Enterprise Productive Assistance), procurement preferences, and halal certification support. Each program runs its own eligibility check, against its own slice of government data, with its own paperwork. A warung (small family-run shop) owner proves the same facts about her business over and over, to agencies that never compare notes.

The cost of this fragmentation shows up in two ways. The first is leakage. Before the current reforms, INDEF estimated that 62.3 percent of the 3 kg LPG subsidy reached households outside the target group, part of Rp86 trillion in energy subsidies flowing to the top half of the income distribution; the Ministry of Finance's own study traced this to weak targeting and the absence of credible beneficiary data. The second is exclusion. Because each program leans on formal-sector data such as tax records and business licences, the informal enterprises these policies most want to reach are the hardest to verify. When distribution rules tightened in early 2025, grassroots LPG retailers were the ones squeezed out.

The government has moved. Since 2024, every 3 kg LPG purchase is recorded against the buyer's NIK (Nomor Induk Kependudukan, the national identity number) under Ministerial Decree 37/2023; by late 2024, 57 million NIKs were registered in the merchant application operated by Pertamina, the state energy company. DTSEN (Data Tunggal Sosial dan Ekonomi Nasional, the National Socioeconomic Single Database) now stands as the mandated single reference for social and economic targeting under Presidential Instruction 4/2025, and the OSS (Online Single Submission) licensing system ties business registration to the civil registry and tax administration under Government Regulation 28/2025. The state increasingly knows who is buying and who is eligible. What it still lacks is a way for that knowledge to travel: eligibility established in one system cannot be reused in another without a new round of bilateral data matching, rebuilt program by program.

The missing layer is the verifiable credential: a digitally signed attestation of a fact, issued by the system that already holds the authoritative data. A micro-enterprise's registration status, socioeconomic classification, and program history become credentials issued by sources such as DTSEN and OSS. The enterprise holds them and presents them wherever eligibility must be shown, whether at a pangkalan (an official LPG distribution point), a KUR lender, or a procurement portal. Each verifier sees only the specific claim it needs, and can check its authenticity instantly, offline if necessary.

The division of labour stays clean. Government systems issue attestations of fact. Programs keep the eligibility decision. No new institution sits in the middle holding a copy of everything. The credential layer does one job: it makes decisions already anchored in authoritative data portable across programs, so that DTSEN's classification of a household or OSS's verification of a business can be consumed anywhere without another integration project. This is the pattern the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure describes for benefit and subsidy delivery, applied to the rails Indonesia has already built.

For the informal majority of micro-enterprises, the issuer set matters as much as the technology. Credentials must be issuable from the data that informal businesses actually generate, including program registries and community-level classification, so that verification stops being a privilege of the already-formal. Which issuers qualify, and under what assurance levels, is a design question the first pilot is meant to settle.

We are inviting partners to scope a first pilot: one credential, one issuer, one verifying program. The natural starting shape is a micro-enterprise eligibility credential issued from an authoritative source such as DTSEN or OSS and accepted by a single program channel, with integration into the DTSEN rollout as the pilot's central design question.

Three roles need filling. Problem owners, the agencies that carry the cost of fragmented eligibility today, to define the credential and the assurance it must carry. Adopters, the banks, distributors, and platforms that would verify it at the point of service. And partners able to mobilise resources for a time-bound pilot, distinct from the rails themselves, which remain government-owned. The Alliance's role is to convene, matchmake, and carry lessons across sectors. If your institution fits one of these roles, we want to hear from you.