KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — The Malaysia Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) has partnered with Visa Malaysia to continue supporting financial technology (fintech) companies and small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) digitalisation journey.
MDEC chief executive officer Surina Shukri said financial services is the core to financial inclusion in the era of digital economy.
“In this regard, fintech has been the most innovative advancement in the digital and technology sphere and it is growing rapidly, including here in Malaysia.
“We have been partnering with Visa Malaysia for quite some time, but this year we are really kicking it up a notch because the whole collective goal of both MDEC, Visa as well as the country is really to advance digital adoption,” she said in her opening remarks at the launch of the Virtual Digital Day today.
She said that the partnership is driven by three main agenda — enabling fintech development; driving e-commerce adoption for businesses, particularly micro SMEs; and driving digitalisation for businesses.
“Digital economy accounts for about 20 per cent of Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) today.
“Last year, we saw a huge uptick in consumer digitalisation where approximately five years worth of consumer digitalisation was compressed into one year, according to Google Statistics, whereas Microsoft Statistics saw two years of business digitalisation compressed in one year,” she said.
Surina said the partnership is aligned with the MyDIGITAL Blueprint as MDEC focuses on enhancing the digital ecosystem by supporting digital businesses, empowering and enabling the required scale development, and striving to attract investments at the same time.
“We are very excited about this collaboration and our aim is to help make sure that Malaysia is on the right path in becoming a digital economy and the Asean digital hub in the next five years,” she said.
Meanwhile, Visa Malaysia country manager Ng Kong Boon said as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, many Malaysians have begun to migrate to e-commerce and practice contactless payment, adding that this behavioural shift is expected to continue post-pandemic.
“Through this partnership with MDEC, we hope to expand our partnership with more e-commerce merchants, SMEs, micro SMEs and support them in their digitalisation journey.
“Visa is supportive of MDEC’s objective to grow the fintech community’s engagement in the country,” he added. — Bernama
