Author: Annette Rowena

Recently, in an attack dubbed “Jade Puffer,” researchers documented what they’re calling the first end-to-end cyberattack run by agentic software. A large language model is said to have orchestrated the intrusion from start to finish, according to Sysdig. The LLM’s behaviour was self-narrating. It reasoned with natural language, prioritised targets, and did so with detailed annotations that human operators don’t usually write. More unsettling still is that the LLM adapted the attack in real time. It retried failed steps with refined parameters, going from a broken login to a working fix in 31 seconds. The reality landing on cybersecurity teams…

Malaysia has become one of the most QR-reliant economies in the world. Just last year, we ranked second globally for QR code payment adoption, at 66.1%. We’re only behind China, which leads at 67.4%. Now, BNM’s Interoperable Fund Transfer Framework is set to change how all of that connects. DuitNow QR, which runs on PayNet’s infrastructure, is a critical juncture for this trajectory. For context, the nationwide total for registered DuitNow QR touchpoints has crossed 3 million. Despite all these achievements, what’s been lacking is connectivity across QR codes. The new BNM Interoperable Fund Transfer Framework (IFTF) sets a 30…

Just open any online banking app in Malaysia, and you’d most likely see the same grid and similar user interface: account balances, icons, transaction lists, and, for those with extra features, perhaps a graph or pie chart offering a glance at where your money went. Useful, certainly, but the user experience mostly ends there. You can see what you spent, but rarely why it matters, what it signals, or what actions can be taken to be more Ringgit-savvy and budget-conscious. Now that is a common pain point that most of us have. experienced. But fret not, AEON Bank has introduced AI…

I rarely interact with AI customer service chatbots in Malaysia, but when I do, I notice that most of the time, I’m being given the runaround and fixed answers that don’t solve my problem. The repeated ordeal for every new enquiry I have peeves me at times, enough to drive me to barge through the chatbot flow in search of a human. Turns out I’m not the only one. “100% of my interactions have been escalated to a human agent. And the worst part is, I have to re-explain everything.” Those were the words of another Malaysian user describing an…

Malaysia’s online marketplace has a shady secret. Every day, hundreds of micro-entrepreneurs complete deals on social media, Carousell, and digital storefronts, armed with nothing but messages and hope. But when something goes wrong, trust breaks down just as quickly. When a buyer ghosts or a seller disappears, those screenshots rarely qualify as proof in the eyes of the local authorities. The collective cost for scams here is a bitter pill to swallow. Malaysians lost RM542 million to scams in 2025, with only RM34 million ever recovered. Steve Rao, the founder and CEO of Janjilah, experienced this “trust deficit” firsthand during…

Consumers today hold high benchmarks for their digital experiences. Every app, platform, and service they touch resets the baseline for what “good” looks like, and that standard follows them into every interaction, banking included. Islamic banks are not immune to this shift. With Islamic banking now contributing 48% of total Islamic financing, the segment has quickly outgrown its origins as a niche serving a value-driven segment. It is now mainstream, with customers that expect what they receive everywhere else: seamless onboarding, instant transactions, intuitive interfaces, and digital tools that match or exceed what they use elsewhere. But one underlying question…

Malaysia still imports roughly 60% of its food. The agriculture minister confirmed this in a written Dewan Negara reply, citing factors like limited farmland, an ageing farmer workforce, and rising production costs that make local produce increasingly uncompetitive. The government has also set a target of 80% rice self-sufficiency by 2030, though experts say that achieving even 75% by 2025 is increasingly unlikely. The farmers who could change this bleak picture, sadly, have the system working against them on both fronts. Payment terms of 79 to 90 days from hypermarkets, for example, mean farmers miss planting windows, struggle to pay…

Almost every Malaysian who has tried to invest in a unit trust knows exactly how this goes. You find an agent’s number, submit a form, and wait. You follow up and wait some more. Sometimes, there’s no reply. Sometimes the response comes weeks later, after you’ve given up, as most people in your position would. What feels like a personal frustration is in fact a predictable outcome. The system was never designed to serve the everyday Malaysian. Looking at incentives, the reason becomes clear. A sales charge of 3% to 5% on your RM2,000 investment earns an agent RM60 to…

The ICD-LSEG Islamic Finance Development Report 2025 indicates that the Islamic finance industry is forecast to touch US$9.7 trillion by 2029. Malaysia’s position within that growth story is well documented, earning the first rank among the Top 10 countries for Islamic finance development, even outpacing Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and UAE. Our country also commands an estimated 33.9% share of the global sukuk market: as of end-July 2025, sukuk accounted for RM1.402 trillion or 63.6% of Malaysia’s total bond and sukuk outstanding. Plans are underway to explore the tokenisation of sukuk next, under BNM’s oversight. A meaningful share of Islamic finance…

Malaysia is moving towards a cashless society. But inside many businesses, finance still runs on paper, patience, and personal favours. Every Malaysian business owner knows the drill. An employee needs supplies. He heads out, buys what he needs, collects the receipts, submits a claim, waits for approval and eventually gets reimbursed. Days later, if he’s lucky. That’s just one part of the problem. Somewhere else in the same company, someone is chasing a missing invoice. Another person is manually reconciling accounts. A founder is personally approving every single payment, often late at night. In many teams, finance decisions bottleneck at…

The Securities Commission of Malaysia (SC) unveiled its SC Malaysia Annual Report 2025 today, sharing its key outcomes for the year. Malaysia’s capital market hit a record RM4.3 trillion in 2025, up 3.2% from 2024, on the back of higher corporate bond issuances and stronger fund management inflows. In his message accompanying the SC Malaysia annual report 2025, Chairman Dato’ Mohammad Faiz Azmi shared that “it was a fulfilling year marked by Malaysia’s leadership of ASEAN and its various platforms, including the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMF), an established mechanism to advance regional capital markets.” Alternative Fundraising Key Financing Drivers…

Atome launched its very own BNPL card, dubbed the Atome Card, a couple of months back, and since then, most eyes have been trained on it. Given that Malaysia now has 7.5 million active BNPL account holders, the segment seems to keep adding products that blur the line between instalment financing and everyday purchasing. The Atome Card sits squarely in that grey zone: it works at any merchant that accepts Visa, and comes with zero annual fees. Yet it is also not a credit card, and runs BNPL instalments. What is the Atome Card? The Atome Card is a BNPL-based…

RM2.8 billion is how much Malaysians lost to scams last year, according to BNM’s fresh-off-the-press 2025 Annual Report. The report doesn’t shy away from the human toll either, recounting the plights of retirees being wiped clean and families watching emergency funds vanish overnight. The Malaysian scam cases keep on piling up, like a recent one where a 55-year-old assistant manager from Bentong lost RM1.3 million in a phone scam. The modus operandi involved a single call from someone claiming to be from a delivery company and a quick chat with a fake “police officer”. Within days, she’d transferred her entire…

There’s a scene in Crazy Rich Asians where Rachel Chu, the female lead who’s an economics professor, is in conversation with Princess Intan, and the conversation steers towards microloans. One line stood out for me. “Microloans help women, and women lift up economies.” It’s a small idea built on big dreams. Give women access to capital, and watch what follows. The film presents it as self-evident. Reality, however, spells a different tale, especially in the venture capital world. Despite years of noise around diversity in venture capital and louder championing of female founders across Southeast Asia, the share of early-stage…

We’re living in a time when convenience is moving as quickly as you can blink, including all things payments, thanks to the gift of AI. Yet the very same technology is fuelling something far more sinister and constantly proving harder to tackle: fraud. Fraud numbers are growing exponentially. According to Juniper Research, eCommerce fraud could rise from $56 billion in 2025 to hit highs of $131 billion in 2030, with factors like friendly fraud carving deeply into merchant margins. Visa paints an equally alarming picture. Today’s cyber criminals are arriving armed with AI-powered deepfakes, synthetic identities, and agentic scams that…

“It’s like a drug.” That’s how a Redditor described their descent into the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) rabbit hole. As a fellow BNPL user myself, I get where he’s coming from. BNPL is everywhere now, tucked into your checkouts, flashing at your payment page, and dropping innuendos that splitting a payment into three or more helps stretch your bank balance. It’s a convincing illusion, and for a lot of Malaysians, that’s exactly where it starts to unravel. The fine prints never announce themselves, and the effective interest rates don’t come with a warning label (yet, at least). Don’t forget…

With 3 million Malaysians under the younger demographic actively using cryptocurrencies, it’s apparent that it’s an increasingly popular investment option here. How do you start getting involved in buying cryptocurrency in Malaysia, though? This article will walk you through everything you need to know about the process of buying cryptocurrency in Malaysia, including licensed cryptocurrency platforms, legal aspects, and best practices for safe trading. Last updated: 16 March 2026 What is cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency is a digital payment system that operates without the need for banks to verify transactions. It uses a peer-to-peer network, allowing people anywhere in the world to…

More than 3.4 billion digital wallets are already in use worldwide, powering close to $9 trillion in annual payments. By 2026, digital wallet adoption is expected to rise to 5.4 billion users, cementing e-wallets as one of the most dominant financial tools on the planet. Yet, despite these transaction volume surges, margins remain as thin as ever. Payment processing has become a scale game, with high-volume, low-yield written all over it. How do banks, fintechs, and payment providers turn these high-volume, low-margin transactions into sustainable profit? Is there a way to effectively move beyond transactions and build ecosystems that drive…

AI’s been reshaping financial services for several years now. But as its digital adoption accelerates, one factor determines whether AI extracts value or adds complexity: choosing the right partners for specialised applications. According to McKinsey, while AI tools are now widespread, most organisations have not embedded them deeply into their workflows, limiting their ability to generate impact at the enterprise level. The right AI fit has the capability to unlock something powerful, like transforming financial systems into agile, high-performance engines that respond as instantly as a digital-native platform. On the flip side, AI trained on flawed data and assumptions festers…

As a mom of three, keeping up with the rising cost of health insurance sometimes feels like a tug of war between protecting my family’s health and maintaining financial stability. I’ve watched as medical inflation has surged by as much as 15% in Malaysia, raising a difficult and increasingly common question for many households: will private health insurance eventually price us out of the very protection we rely on? The pressure stems from multiple sources, creating the perfect storm. We have an aging population, a rise in lifestyle diseases like diabetes, and the high costs of importing advanced medical tech…