PETALING JAYA, Jan 16 ― Over RM10 million was spent on the first day of the e-tunai Rakyat initiative, says Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

"As at 10pm last night, all three service providers of the e-tunai Rakyat initiative namely Boost, GrabPay and Touch 'n Go eWallet approved 320,000 out of the 380,000 applications.

"Implementing cashless transaction initiative is an important step towards transparency and accountability because this is one of the ways that we will we able to cut down on corruption,” he told a press conference during a campaign for the initiative here today.

Meanwhile, Lim said the government is ready to top up their allocation for the initiative if the RM450 million initial funding has been used up.

On concerns expressed by some quarters that their personal information might be misused by other parties, Lim said the government is very strict on the matter and has put the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 in place.

Lim assured the public that any personal information divulged while applying for the initiative would not be shared with third parties.

"We understand the public is worried that their consumption pattern will be misused by third parties, but we are not running a business so we will not allow any organisation to profit from that.

"This initiative is under Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which is a government sovereign wealth fund, so of course they take direction from the government,” he said.

Under the initiative, it is expected that about 15 million Malaysians are eligible to claim RM30 from the government through one of three e-wallet operators beginning from yesterday until March 14.

Malaysians aged 18 years and above, with an annual income of less than RM100,000 would qualify for the e-cash payment. ― Bernama