UOB Malaysia today reported that its customers’ use of digital payment methods in 2018 has grown by almost 50 per cent over the year before.
This increase reflects changes in the way customers’ choose to make payments, a report compiled by Fintech News Malaysia also indicated an overall increase in the adoption of digital payment in Malaysia.
Digital payments via UOB Malaysia’s internet banking service have grown by 25 per cent between January 2017 and December 2018. Customers also made three times more digital payments through the Bank’s mobile banking service, UOB Mighty, in December 2018 compared with 12 months earlier.
According to UOB Malaysia’s data, peer-to-peer payments or digital fund transfers were the most popular digital payment transactions in 2018. Two in three internet and mobile banking transactions by UOB customers were peer-to-peer payments in 2018.
Over the same period, customers also used digital payment methods to pay their bills and make credit card payments. These accounted for 32 per cent of all digital transactions carried out by customers last year.
The rise of digital fund transfers coincides with a decline in the use of cheques in peer-to-peer payment. Cheque payments have declined by almost 30 per cent in the last two years.
On the back of this data, it is our hope that UOB will double down on digital initiatives in Malaysia and perhaps consider a similar model of their digital-only bank “TMRW” which they launched in Thailand just a month ago.
