Love Bali: a Rp369 billion digital levy shows that easy payment is not the same as compliance
Solution case studies are scenarios based on common industry problem patterns. They do not refer to any client and are not MarkasDev project portfolio items. Our client portfolio is published separately.
Industry context
For the record, we had no involvement in Love Bali. What follows is based on government data and reporting anyone can access. The Love Bali system and the Foreign Tourist Levy (Pungutan Wisatawan Asing, PWA) are run by the Bali Provincial Government together with Bank BPD Bali, the appointed collecting bank. We read the official Love Bali website, Bali Provincial Government releases, and reporting by ANTARA, detikBali, Bali Post, RRI, and Dewata News. All sources are listed at the end.
Since 14 February 2024 at 00:00 Central Indonesia Time, every foreign tourist visiting Bali has been charged Rp150,000 per person, paid once per visit (ANTARA, 14 February 2024, and the Love Bali FAQ). The legal basis is Bali Provincial Regulation No. 6 of 2023, amended by Regulation No. 2 of 2025, together with Governor Regulation No. 2 of 2024, amended by Governor Regulation No. 25 of 2025 (Love Bali FAQ).
What makes it interesting from a technology angle: the levy has been 100 percent cashless from day one. Tourists pay through the Love Bali website or app, at bank counters at the airport and ports, or through hotels, travel agents, and attractions registered as endpoints. Proof of payment is a levy voucher with a QR code sent by email. Funds go into a BPD Bali account and then the regional treasury, and their management is audited by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) (detikBali, 16 May 2026).
For leaders in regional government, regional state-owned enterprises, hotels, and destination management, this is a real example of a fully digital regional levy, with results that are open to read, including the parts that have not worked yet.
Problem
The Bali Provincial Government wanted foreign tourists to help fund the protection of Balinese culture and the natural environment, including waste, upgrading tourist attractions, infrastructure, roads, and tourism promotion (ANTARA, 14 February 2024). According to Bali Post (26 March 2026), before this policy the province earned no direct revenue from foreign tourists.
The scale is large: about 6.3 million foreign tourists in 2024 and about 7 million in 2025 (Governor Wayan Koster, detikBali, 16 May 2026), arriving by air, by sea, and on cruise ships. Collecting Rp150,000 from each of them without cash and without adding queues is not simple.
The real cost shows in the gap between potential and actual collection. The Speaker of the Bali Provincial Parliament said that if 7 million foreign tourists each paid Rp150,000 the total should be large, but not all of it can be collected because the system does not yet support it (Bali Post, 26 March 2026). Only about 32 percent of foreign tourists paid in 2024 and about 34 percent in 2025 (detikBali). Roughly two thirds of the potential levy went uncollected.
The cause is not only tourists' willingness to pay. The Bali office of the Indonesian Ombudsman received complaints about app problems, limited public information, and unclear use of the funds (Bali Provincial Government, 24 January 2025). In August 2026, the head of the PWA Acceleration Team said the Love Bali portal often goes down in peak season, QR codes fail to scan, double payments occur, checks at entry points still rely on self-declaration, and payment data is not yet integrated with immigration or hotel data (Bali Post, 26 August 2026).
Constraints
- Large and seasonal scale, with load spikes in peak season
- Must be 100 percent cashless with funds going straight to the regional treasury, for accountability
- Must not add queues at the airport, so the planned fixed scanners were replaced with handheld scanners
- The province does not hold foreign arrival data. Immigration does, and according to the Governor involving immigration requires a legal basis at the national level
- Many entry and collection points: the airport, ports such as Benoa, Padangbai, and Gilimanuk, cruise ships, hotels, travel agents, and attractions
- Seven exemption categories, such as KITAS and KITAP residence permit holders, some of which must be requested at least five days before arrival
- Payments in rupiah from tourists using different cards and currencies, with no refunds
- Spending must follow regional planning and budgeting rules and be tagged so it can be audited
- Limits of our evidence: compliance figures differ between sources, and there is no public data on uptime or system cost
Approach
Diagnose
This section is our analysis of how the Diagnose phase shows up in the Love Bali case. It is not a claim that MarkasDev did this work.
Important design decisions were made before launch. The province revised Governor Regulation No. 35 into Governor Regulation No. 2 of 2024 so that payment no longer had to happen at the entry gate, and could be made before departure, at hotels, travel agents, and attractions. A plan to install fixed scanners in the arrival hall was dropped because it could create long queues, and roving officers with phone-like scanners were used instead (ANTARA, 14 February 2024). Rules and processes were adjusted to the traveller's journey.
What was not answered from the start is how the system knows who has not paid. Foreign arrival data sits with immigration, not with the province. In March 2026 the Governor named the lack of direct immigration involvement as one reason collection was below potential, and said that involvement needs a legal basis such as a Government Regulation, Presidential Regulation, or Ministerial Regulation (Bali Post, 16 March 2026). Without a reference dataset, compliance can be measured but is hard to enforce.
Diagnose questions for your organisation: who owns the data that determines who must pay, what legal basis or contract allows you to use it, what peak load must the system handle, and where are users most likely to give up. See our Diagnose approach.
Deliver
This is also analysis. Deliver means building in stages, with real testing and clear acceptance criteria.
Love Bali was tested in layers. According to the Bali Provincial Government (8 February 2024), the service first went through User Acceptance Testing (UAT) in a DevTest environment, then an Operational Test on 7 February 2024 at the Bank BPD Bali office using real tourist data. Each scenario was tested one by one: individual payments, group payments, every endpoint or payment gateway, and cards, BPD Bali channels, bank transfer, and QRIS. Between opening the app at midnight and 5 pm that day, more than 700 tourists had already paid.
BPD Bali recorded that from 7 February to 6 pm on 13 February 2024, Rp2.2 billion had been collected from 14,131 transactions, with more than 90 percent paid by credit card (ANTARA, 14 February 2024).
Third-party features followed. Cruise agents can pay for groups using a form for up to 9 people or a spreadsheet template for up to 500 passengers per payment (Love Bali FAQ). In August 2025, the Bali Tourism Office said it was upgrading the system so hotels could check and collect the levy, with cooperation agreements managed digitally and the system tallying a service fee of up to 3 percent (ANTARA, 7 August 2025).
Reasonable acceptance criteria for a similar system (our analysis): available under peak load, no double payments, QR codes readable at every checkpoint, and payment status checkable at every point. See also system integration & APIs and web applications.
Operate
This is also analysis. Once the system is live, the Operate phase decides whether compliance actually moves.
Regulation No. 2 of 2025 grants a service fee of up to 3 percent to benefit partners, namely hotels, villas, attraction operators, cruise agents, and travel agencies that help collect the levy, paid quarterly (ANTARA, 16 August 2025). Since August 2025 at least 150 accommodation providers have joined (ANTARA, 3 January 2026). In November 2025 only 5 of the 37 airlines flying directly to Bali were telling passengers about the levy (ANTARA, 25 November 2025). In September 2026 the province invited international airlines to remind passengers to pay before take-off, and held talks with eight of the world's largest online travel agencies (ANTARA, 21 September 2026).
Accountability for the funds is part of Operate too. Bali's finance and planning agencies explained that levy money in the treasury must be mapped to programmes, activities, and sub-activities, with the funding source tagged so it can be traced through to reporting (Bali Post, 26 August 2026).
The open work is reliability and data integration. The Governor acknowledged that BPD Bali's payment network is weak (detikBali, 16 May 2026), and the parliament speaker described tourists giving up on paying at the airport because of poor signal (Bali Post, 26 March 2026). Within an Operate frame, routine work means watching capacity in peak season, following up failed QR scans and double payments, reconciling data with partners, and keeping servers and environments ready for spikes.
High-level architecture
This flow is our simplification of the Love Bali FAQ and Terms and Conditions, Bali Provincial Government releases, and ANTARA and Bali Post reporting, not an architecture we have audited. Integration with immigration data and the national All Indonesia app is still a proposal or plan according to the sources we opened, not yet in operation. According to the PWA Acceleration Team, checks at the airport and ports still relied on self-declaration as of August 2026. Technical details such as hosting, capacity, developer roles, and build cost are not published.
Typical outcomes
All figures come from sources we opened, with the source on each row.
| Indicator | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Trial and first week (7 to 13 Feb 2024) | Rp2.2 billion from 14,131 transactions, more than 90 percent by credit card | BPD Bali via ANTARA, 14 Feb 2024 |
| 2024 revenue (14 Feb to 31 Dec) | more than Rp318 billion, above the initial Rp250 billion target | Bali Regional Secretary, Bali Provincial Government, 24 Jan 2025 |
| 2024 payers | about 2.1 million of about 6.3 million foreign tourists, about 32 percent | Governor of Bali via detikBali, 16 May 2026 |
| 2025 revenue | Rp369 billion | Governor of Bali via ANTARA, 3 Jan 2026, and detikBali |
| 2025 payers | about 2.4 million of about 7 million, about 34 percent | Governor of Bali via detikBali, 16 May 2026 |
| Paid before departure | 96 percent of payers | Governor of Bali via detikBali, 16 May 2026 |
| 2026 revenue as of 26 August | Rp244 billion against a Rp500 billion target, compliance about 37 percent | Bali Post, 26 Aug 2026 |
| 2026 revenue as of 20 September | Rp289 billion, payers for 1 to 20 September reached 43 percent | Governor of Bali via ANTARA, 21 Sep 2026 |
The figures need careful reading. 2024 compliance has been quoted as about 32 percent (detikBali), 33.24 percent (Bali Post, 26 March 2026), and 37.27 percent (ANTARA, 7 August 2025). 2025 compliance has been quoted as 34 and 35.4 percent. The 2025 target was reported as Rp325 billion initially (Dewata News), Rp400 billion (ANTARA, 7 August 2025), and Rp500 billion (the provincial finance agency via Bali Post, which put achievement at about 74 percent).
The Governor estimates total 2026 levy revenue at about Rp429 billion (ANTARA, 21 September 2026). That is a projection, not a result.
Use of funds. Levy-funded spending in the 2026 regional budget was set at Rp500.376 billion, with Rp163.385 billion or 32.65 percent spent by 31 July 2026. The largest share, Rp462.4 billion, goes to customary villages (desa adat), while the Rp19.577 billion environment budget had reached only 0.68 percent (Bali Post, 26 August 2026, and RRI, 28 August 2026).
Not published: the build and running cost of Love Bali, uptime or incident data, the number of double payments, and an official method for the compliance figure.
Typical or expected outcomes, not claims about MarkasDev project results.About this analysis
This page is compiled from open sources and is not a MarkasDev client project. We did not interview the Bali Provincial Government or BPD Bali, did not test the app, and did not access transaction data. Figures come from officials' statements on official websites and in the media. Sources we could not open (Tribun Bali, Pos Bali, BaliNews, Bisnis Bali) were not used as a basis.
Why this case matters for regions and tourism businesses in Indonesia
Many regions collect fees, entrance tickets, or service charges. The Bali case shows that digital payment closes leakage because every rupiah is recorded and goes to the treasury, but the final result still depends on data integration, reliability at peak, the role of partners, and public trust.
Reading the case through Diagnose, Deliver, Operate
Who must pay, and whose data proves it? That is Diagnose. Which features launch first, and how are they tested with real data? That is Deliver. Who monitors availability, reconciliation, partners, and spending reports every month? That is Operate. For other case studies in this sector, see the Hospitality & travel sector. To start a conversation, see IT consulting or contact us.
Sources
Accessed 5 October 2026 (WIB).
- Love Bali, Bali Provincial Government, FAQ (frequently asked questions) and Terms & Conditions.
- Bali Provincial Government, Pemprov Bali Lakukan Tes Operasional, Uji Coba Terakhir Aplikasi Love Bali, 8 February 2024.
- ANTARA, Bali mulai terapkan pungutan wisman Rp150 ribu per orang, 14 February 2024.
- ANTARA, BPD Bali catat metode bayar pungutan wisman mayoritas kartu kredit, 14 February 2024.
- Bali Provincial Government (Bali Media Center), Realisasi PWA 2024 Lampaui Target, Sekda Dewa Indra Pastikan Teralokasi Sesuai Peruntukannya, 24 January 2025.
- ANTARA, Dispar Bali perbaiki sistem Pungutan Wisman agar hotel bisa memungut, 7 August 2025.
- ANTARA, Pemprov Bali mulai jalankan kerja sama imbal jasa pungutan wisman, 16 August 2025.
- ANTARA Mataram, Bali ingin sistem pungutan wisman terintegrasi dengan imigrasi, coordination meeting on 25 November 2025.
- ANTARA, Bali's tourist tax brings US$22M, still short of goal, 3 January 2026.
- Dewata News, Bali Collects Rp369 Billion in Foreign Tourist Levy in 2025, Sets Higher Target for 2026, 4 January 2026.
- Bali Post, Pengelolaan Pungutan Wisatawan Asing Diadukan ke Kejagung, Ini Kata Gubernur Koster, 16 March 2026.
- Bali Post, PWA Bali Belum Maksimal, DPRD Soroti Sistem Pembayaran hingga Peran Imigrasi, 26 March 2026.
- detikBali, Koster Tergetkan Pungutan Wisatawan Asing Capai Rp 500 Miliar pada 2026, 16 May 2026.
- Bali Post, Dihadang Rendahnya Kepatuhan, Capaian PWA Bali Baru 37 Persen, 26 August 2026.
- RRI, PWA Bali Rp244 Miliar, Transparansi Penggunaan Dana Jadi Sorotan, 28 August 2026.
- ANTARA Bali, Pemprov Bali catat Pungutan Warga Asing naik jadi 43 persen, 21 September 2026.