The issuing of number plates is regulated and administered by SAMSAT (Indonesian: Sistem Administrasi Manunggal Satu Atap, lit.

The lettering convention denoting the area of registration is a legacy of the Dutch colonial era and does not reflect the current regional divisions of the country into provinces.

A white-on-blue license plate with area code SB is issued for rickshaws operating in the city of Surabaya.

In Banjarmasin, rickshaws operating in the city are issued with plate using a unique format, XXXX BS.

The early format included regional codes such as CH for Cirebon, SB for Surabaya, and SOK for the eastern coast of Sumatra; and registration numbers with no official standards.

At the beginning of the 1980s, plates with four-digit numbers separated by a dot at the bottom that denote the month and year of expiry (e.g. 06•87) was introduced.

[11][12] Along with the increase of motorized vehicles in Indonesia, the technical design and specification of vehicle registration plates began to be regulated by the Direktorat Lalu Lintas Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia/Ditlantas Polri (Traffic Directorate) of the Indonesian National Police.

The Traffic Corps of the Indonesian National Police (Korps Lalu Lintas Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia/Korlantas Polri) introduced their more-complete coat of arms, with shield and ribbon with the letter "Dharmakerta Marga Raksyaka".

The license plates are made from 1 mm (0.039 in)-thick aluminium with edge lines with the same color as the numbers.

The new color scheme was implemented to ease the detection of motoring offenses with traffic enforcement cameras.

[16] To increase the effectivity of the new color scheme, FE-Schrift typeface was first implemented for regular personal four-wheel plates only since November 2022.

Besides that, commercial/public transport (black on yellow) and government-owned (white on red) vehicle plates began to use FE-Schrift at the same time.

These are:[18] The Indonesian National Police has set a special license plate for electric vehicles with additional blue trim at the expiry date row in accordance with the regulations in the Decree of the Head of the Traffic Corps of the Indonesian National Police in 2020.

Temporary registration plates currently have two formats, namely: In Jakarta, these codes are applied based on vehicle categories.

A separate format exists for private vehicles belonging to government, military or police officials.

On 27 January 2023, the Traffic Corps of the Indonesian National Police announced that special RF plates would be discontinued in October 2023, due to often being misused by numbers of people.

Registration plates for vehicles belonging to the government of foreign countries or international organizations follow a different convention.

The list of countries and organizations follows: Consulates also use the same format but instead of using the letters CD, they use CC.

Some foreign countries and international-organization vehicles in Jakarta use the B xxxxx yyy format and a normal white on black plate.

Even the former President Megawati Soekarnoputri chooses "M 3 GA" for her personal vehicle, as the plate resembles her broadly-known nickname.