PUTRAJAYA, Oct 30 — Selangor and Penang are leading the charge by reaching a 90 per cent penetration rate of digital payments as of October, said Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) government digitalisation division senior director Firdaus Ghani.
The penetration rate in Kedah, meanwhile, has reached 80 per cent, Perlis more than 60 per cent, Johor over 50 per cent and Perak about 49 per cent.
“The achievement of Selangor and Penang is the result of the cooperation of the state’s top management, which encourages cashless payments to reduce leakages and increase government revenue,” he told reporters after the ‘Cashless Boleh 3.0’ campaign prize-presentation ceremony and talk on digital payments here today.
PayNet is a centralised infrastructure payment network for Malaysia’s premier financial market and operates general purpose digital payment facilities such as DuitNow, DuitNow QR and JomPay.
PayNet is owned by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and a consortium of 11 local banks.
The ‘Cashless Boleh’ campaign aims to promote the habit of e-payment or cashless as the main payment method in Malaysia. The campaign is also to help the migration of Federal government agencies and local authorities (PBT) towards achieving 100 per cent cashless payment collection.
Earlier, in the discussion regarding digital payments in the public sector, representatives of government agencies shared the experience of implementing cashless payment methods in their respective agencies.
Immigration Department deputy director-general (Management) Datuk Zakaria Shaaban said the agency often faced financial problems such as bad cheques, invalid payment issues or loss of cash before switching to cashless payment.
According to him, the Immigration Department has reached 100 per cent cashless payments since December 2020 and is still maintaining that rate until now.
“There are no problems with cashless (payments) now. The approach we take can be said to be ‘forced voluntarily’, which means there is no cash transaction.
“It is true that we received various complaints, especially from stakeholders, but the support received from the top management kept us on track with this initiative,” he said.
The secretary of the Finance Division of the Ministry of Health (MOH), D. Dhanesh Kumar said that among the challenges in the implementation of cashless payments are community acceptance, digital literacy and the availability of infrastructure in some areas.
According to him, cashless transactions involving MOH have increased from 426,000 in January 2023 to 1.2 million now. — Bernama
