In 2021, over 7.2 billion transactions were made with e-payment channels in Malaysia, a 30% year-on-year increase. This makes it the largest growth spurt since 2006, according to Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

The effects of pandemic-accelerated digitalisation appear to be long-lasting, and not just a flash in the pan: an MDEC-IDC study expects the country’s e-commerce gross transaction value (GTV) to reach US$6 billion (RM25.2 billion) in 2022, doubling from the US$3 billion in 2019. It further forecasts e-commerce GTV to total US$13 billion by 2025, with almost all transactions conducted using digital payments.

Industry players have responded quickly to customer demand for e-payments: Malaysia’s fintech sector grew by 27% in 2021 to 294 fintech companies, of which 60 are payments players.

On the regulators’ end, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) issued the Financial Sector Blueprint 2022-2026 in January 2022, which sets out the central bank’s development priorities for the financial sector and shared ambitions for an open data ecosystem, a national digital identity scheme, and real-time payment linkages.

Three months later, BNM announced the successful applicants for the country’s first five digital bank licenses; a consortium of Boost and RHB Bank Berhad; a consortium led by GXS Bank Pte. Ltd. and Kuok Brothers Sdn. Bhd; a consortium led by Sea Limited and YTL Digital Capital Sdn Bhd; a consortium of AEON Financial Service Co., Ltd., AEON Credit Service (M) Berhad and MoneyLion Inc.; and a consortium led by KAF Investment Bank Sdn. Bhd.

With competition heating up and customer demands for more varied, secure, and frictionless services, a robust tech back-end is vital to support payment providers’ growth aspirations, while combating digital payments risks such as fraud, personal data protection, and other cyberthreats that can easily erode years of consumer trust and brand recognition.

Fintechs and digital banks need to be able to offer omnichannel payment solutions involving many variables, including cross-border payments, card schemas, biometrics, currency conversion, digital delivery of products, gifting, loyalty programmes, and cash funding and payouts to digital wallets – all while migrating to the latest ISO 20022 financial standards.

How can Ren help fintechs and digital banks offer omnichannel payment solutions?

Ren, Euronet’s flagship payments software, simplifies these various issues so fintechs and digital banks can focus on product development. Available as a single modular, programmable enterprise platform or several low-code solutions for specific payments use cases, Ren is able to meet payment providers where they are on their scalability or growth journey.

Ren’s flexibility also extends to helping state-owned enterprises and government-linked financiers fulfil their financial inclusion mandates and cater to MSMEs and the underbanked by accelerating their digital payments offerings.

In December 2021, Indonesia’s largest state-owned bank switching network, PT Jalin Pembayaran Nusantara (Jalin) announced that it would modernise its offerings using the Ren payments platform.

Ren solutions enable fast and easy onboarding for financial institutions to real-time payments (RTP) networks as well as digital payments overlay services such as P2P, bill payments, and payroll for RTP-enabled financial institutions.

Meanwhile, its merchant acquiring services include traditional and digital payments, ATMs and POS terminals. On the card issuing side, Ren aids customers in developing physical, tokenised, and virtual cards. Separately, it also offers a self-service product that allows for easy-to-use and advanced management for ATM fleets, POS systems, and kiosks.

Ren offers end-to-end managed services models as well as private and public cloud payment solutions. Created to address specific payments use cases, Ren solutions are designed to streamline installations with minimal configurations while its low-code requirements enable fintechs and digital banks to roll out new products to market quickly and cost-effectively.

For traditional banks that are making their digital pivot while still using ageing infrastructure, Ren’s on-premise data centres can be used in tandem with legacy systems to deliver modern, frictionless payments experiences. Customers may opt for a ‘pay as you grow’ model while implementing new payments functionalities incrementally according to their product roadmaps, available technical resources, and budgets.

For smaller, more mobile fintechs and payments players, Ren operates in popular cloud environments such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Ren can also aid in custom projects, where Euronet teams will use Ren or physical assets from Euronet’s global payments network to build custom solutions. Finished projects will then be delivered as SaaS applications from Euronet’s data centres, a cloud provider of the customer’s choice or a customer’s on-premise data centre.

Euronet’s global payment network includes 51,062 ATMs, approximately 569,000 EFT POS terminals and a growing portfolio of outsourced debit and credit card services which are under management in 63 countries; card software solutions; a prepaid processing network of approximately 762,000 POS terminals at approximately 339,000 retailer locations in 63 countries and a global money transfer network of approximately 504,000 locations serving 182 countries and territories. With corporate headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, USA, and 66 worldwide offices, Euronet serves clients in approximately 190 countries and territories.

Trust Bank Singapore, the first of Singapore’s new wave of digital banks, has selected Euronet for payments processing. Leveraging Ren’s modern card issuing platform and hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, Trust has been able to serve over 200,000 customers within its first month since launch.

The payments world is evolving at a rapid pace, and businesses are seeking ways to capitalise on consumer demands for convenient, fast, and secure payment methods. Payments and transactions have plenty of pain points. While most technology solutions players are able to fix just one or two of those friction points, Ren addresses them all, providing the tools to fix immediate problems now with future-proof technology for building new solutions as customer needs evolve.

To learn more about Ren’s suite of solutions, visit their website.