Malaysians will soon be able to enjoy a new payments service that was made possible thanks to a partnership between payment company Soft Space and Malaysia’s national payments network PayNet.

Dubbed as Fasstap, businesses will be able to use any Android-based smartphones with NFC technology to accept and process MyDebit payments — which is available on all Malaysian debit cards.

Making card acceptance more accessible to small businesses

Still at its pilot phase, the new payments service can potentially make accepting card payments much more accessible to the likes hawkers, pasar malam traders and other small businesses.

In order to accept card payments businesses typically have to pay up to RM 1,000 and that’s excluding the fixed cost associated with the POS terminal. By using Fasstap, the such costs will largely disappear since their smartphone could double up to receive card payments.

The sign-up process is comparatively simpler compared to the traditional route, in order to start accepting card payments through Fasstap, business owners with existing merchant IDs just need to download the app via Google Playstore and within a few taps start accepting payment.

Compared to Soft Space’s earlier mobile payment iteration which requires businesses to plug in a dongle to accept card payments, this new service requires no additional hardware to get it up and running.

For now, this service is only available to debit cards and acceptance for credit cards will be made available after the pilot. Joel Tay, CEO Soft Space expressed that it is crucial that they use this period to better understand merchant behaviour prior to a wider roll-out.

What this service could mean to Malaysians

Where most fintech companies are going the e-wallet route, Soft Space and Paynet’s initiative is more targeted towards a large user base of debit cards holders who are already comfortable with this method of payment.

If Fasstap sees widespread adoption, restaurant owners could equip their waiters with the app and diners might not need to walk to the counter and wait a long time for the waiter to bring the POS device to make a payment anymore.

When engaging in contractors services, homeowners could also easily pay them using their cards instead of having to go through the hassle of either paying by cash or online banking.

This new payments service paired with Paynet’s recent Duitnow and an ongoing push for e-wallets provides Malaysians with more options of cashless payments and perhaps could be the tipping point that Malaysia needs in order to transition into a cashless economy.

Peter Schiesser, CEO, Paynet, who was also present during the launch event, expressed much optimism for a cashless Malaysia to be possible with Fasstap’s low-barrier to entry and MyDebit’s lower average MDR cost of 0.56% compared to the average 1.33% for credit cards.

Soft Space’s Future Ambitions

Joel Tay told Fintech News Malaysia that they are also aiming to launch this service in other regions as well. They have their eyes set on Japan where they can leverage off their existing relationship with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company to introduce this to Japanese consumers.

Currently, Soft Space is targeting to have this service available in Japan during the Tokyo Olympics which is happening in 2020.