Merchantrade Asia and the Construction Labour Exchange Centre Berhad (CLAB) have forged an alliance to facilitate cashless wages for both Malaysians and foreign workers in the construction industry.
Through this collaboration, CLAB will facilitate contractors to pay salaries via top-up direct into Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid Card, which is in line with the government’s initiatives in promoting cashless wages and reach the unbanked community.
Merchantrade Asia is a digital money services business operator and e-money issuer, whilst CLAB is responsible for bringing and redistributing of foreign workers catering to the needs of organisations and companies in the construction industries.
Merchantrade Asia’s Managing Director Ramasamy K Veeran, said the collaboration aimed at providing digital salary payments had started in August 2019.
“By having their salaries credited into the Merchantrade Money Visa card, foreign workers can send their money to their families back at their home countries digitally on their mobile devices, hence eliminating the need for contractors to pay salaries in cash.
“This is especially critical now, as the Covid-19 pandemic has restricted the movement of foreign workers to cash out their wages and make payments, in addition to mitigating several other risks such as theft and robbery of cash,”
To date, this initiative with CLAB has roped in some 2,000 foreign workers and is expected to increase to 4,000 by the first quarter of 2021.
Abdul Rafik Abdul Rajis, CLAB’s Chief Executive Officer said “with over 165 registered companies, coupled with the support from the Home Ministry and Human Resource Ministry to promote the facilitation of cashless wages, CLAB has met the objective by roping in workers from the unbanked segment through this collaboration”.
CLAB would be able to monitor salary transactions, location of workers as well as Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) deductions for foreign workers registered under them.
Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid card also offers a variety of other services and benefits such as remittances, mobile reloads, online purchases, personal accident insurance coverage, multi lingual application and customer services with eight different languages including English, Malay, Nepali, Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese and Burmese and many more directly from the Merchantrade mobile wallet app.
Featured image: (From left) Abdul Rafik Abdul Rajis, CEO of CLAB and Ramasamy K Veeran, Managing Director of Merchantrade Asia
