Merchantrade Asia Sdn Bhd a home-grown Money Service Business operator has launched a VISA multi-currency prepaid card that digitally converts pre-loaded Malaysian Ringgit into multiple currencies. This launch comes in the time of an increasingly competitive landscape with the likes of Alipay, WechatPay, BigPay, Boost, Vcash, One2Pay and countless others each coming up their own version of mobile wallet in Malaysia
The service is known as Merchantrade Money, it consists of a pre-paid payments card coupled with a mobile app that enables users to buy and sell currencies at a lock-in rate, card to card money transfer and load up to RM 10,000. The users of Merchantrade Money will also be able to withdraw cash from VISA enabled ATMs around the world at the locked-in exchange rates, subjected to respective overseas bank charges.
The service currently can hold value in 5 currencies namely; Australian Dollars, Sterling Pound, Indonesia Ruppiah, Singapore Dollar, US Dollar and Malaysian Ringgit with the goal of having a total of 20 currencies by 2018. Merchantrade Money will primarily be targeted at Malaysia’s large migrant worker population and travellers.
When reached for comment on how Merchantrade plans to thrive in this competitive landscape Ramasamy K Veeran, Managing Director, Merchantrade commented “There are a lot of wallets out there, however not everyone has the same ecosystem that we do. We are currently the largest currency trader in the nation”
Merchantrade currently operates 84 money services branches with footprints in major shopping centers and with more than 400 agent locations across Malaysia. Through strategic international partnerships the network spreads across to 234,000 pay out points”
Chiming in on the matter, Vince Au Yoong, Chief Payments Officer, Merchantrade added “It (Merchantrade Money) has our existing apps like the e-Forex and e-Remit integrated into it which other players do not”
Merchantrade also claims that within 2 months of the soft launch they’ve already acquired 10,000 customers with close RM 10 Million reloads happening on their platform.
