Author: Izzat Najmi Abdullah

An institution that buys Bitcoin has to decide who will hold the keys that move it. Its board also needs to know who can approve a transfer and how access would be restored if the usual people or systems fail. Vincent Fong, Chief Editor of Fintech News Network, put the concern to a panel of custodians at the Luno Institutional Digital Asset Conference in Kuala Lumpur. “Who do we trust with our assets, and is it actually safe?” His question led the panellists through what an institution would need to check before holding crypto itself or entrusting it to a…

Invitees to Hong Leong Bank’s (HLB) new Opus card unlock 60,000 Malaysia Airlines Enrich points and worldwide lounge access the moment they pay the annual fee. But securing one isn’t a matter of simply filling out an application. Reserved strictly for select high-net-worth and business clients, HLB Opus is Southeast Asia’s first ceramic credit card and Malaysia’s inaugural Visa Infinite Privilege payment experience crafted with G+D’s Convego® Ceramic card technology to bring premium materials and sophisticated payment technology together. Why G+D’s Convego Ceramic After 25 Years of Metal? Forged at over 1,200°C, diamond-refined, and produced at a rate of fewer…

Talk of ringgit stablecoins may sound promising, but the average Malaysian already has DuitNow on their phone. If money can already move instantly at almost any hour, what exactly is a ringgit stablecoin meant to fix? Vincent Fong, Chief Editor of Fintech News Network, put that question to the panel at the Luno Institutional Digital Asset Conference Kuala Lumpur 2026 (LIDAC26), asking what purpose local-currency stablecoins would serve and whether consumers even needed one. Milind Sanghavi, Founder and CEO of Xweave, was not convinced domestic payments were the answer. “If you have a really good real-time payment system, I’m not…

How much control does a bank really have over the AI it uses? Let’s picture a relationship manager reviewing a credit memo drafted by an agent. Before relying on it, the banker first needs to know which customer records informed the assessment and whether the agent used the current lending policy. And once other departments start building their own agents, keeping track of them becomes a job in itself. As adoption spreads, teams may duplicate work, rely on different policy versions and struggle to track costs across departments. Managing that work across departments is part of what Huawei aims to…

A year or two ago, bank executives used to ask how artificial intelligence (AI) could make employees faster or shave costs off operations. Garry Sien, Chief Innovation and Solutions Officer, International Business at Ant Digital Technologies, says that conversation has moved on. “Since the beginning of 2026, that interest level has now swung into revenue generation,” he told Fintech News Network. Bank executives put it more bluntly now. Show me the ROI, they say. The shift matters most in markets still building out formal banking access. In the Philippines, the share of adults with a formal financial account climbed to 58%…

A RM1,000 BNPL balance is almost 59% of Malaysia’s RM1,700 monthly minimum wage, a level that the bottom 10% of formal employees were earning at or below in September 2025. If you are earning minimum pay, does that still sound like a small debt? At the national level, the picture looks very different as by the end of 2025, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) found that BNPL accounted for just 0.3% of total household debt, even though outstanding balances had reached RM4.9 billion. Small nationally, perhaps but the people using BNPL tell another part of the story. More than 70% of…

The 10 Bursa-listed Malaysian banking groups in this comparison collectively made about RM9.58 billion in net profit during the April-to-June quarter, roughly 3.6% more than the same group earned a year earlier. Maybank alone contributed RM2.69 billion, or about 28% of the combined figure. CIMB and Public Bank followed with RM1.94 billion and RM1.82 billion respectively. Together, the three accounted for roughly two-thirds of the profits in this comparison. The growth ranking looks quite different. Alliance Bank’s profit jumped 25%, while Hong Leong Bank grew 14.2%. Affin Bank and MBSB were the only two to report lower earnings, with MBSB’s…

Let me ask you something. What would you do if you opened your digital banking app one morning and found out the bank was shutting down? Your first concern would probably be the money already sitting there, especially if your salary goes into that account or you keep part of your savings there. If you also have a loan with the same bank, another question follows almost immediately. Am I already free from the debt? Before anyone panics, none of Malaysia’s digital banks is currently in that position. GXBank, Boost Bank, AEON Bank, Ryt Bank and KAF Digital Bank are…

A bank can authenticate the right customer at 9.01am and still lose control of that session by 9.05am, without a single failed login anywhere in between. Those four minutes, the window right after a customer proves who they are, are where account takeover fraud increasingly plays out now, according to bank and security executives speaking on a recent Fintech News Network webinar. Banks have spent years tightening the front door with multi-factor authentication, device binding and biometrics. As those defences have improved, fraudsters have started looking for ways around them. Some account takeover attacks are now targeting customers after they…

Most Malaysians probably do not think of their finances as particularly complicated until they count how many places their money is kept. Your salary might go into one bank, your emergency savings into another, while your credit card comes from somewhere else. For EPF, well, you check that separately through KWSP, while an e-wallet or two handles much of your everyday spending. Getting a full picture of your finances can already mean opening several apps. Malaysia’s Open Finance push could make some of that easier. A new Brankas whitepaper argues that the framework could allow banks and fintechs to build…

Malaysia’s digital asset calendar has been busy this year. Banks and regulators have moved several ideas that used to live mostly in discussion papers into testing, while the rules governing parts of the market are changing at the same time. Much of the work is still underway, which gives Luno’s Institutional Digital Asset Conference (LIDAC) plenty to work with when it returns on 24 September. The second edition of LIDAC brings it back to Kuala Lumpur in 2026, which is set to gather more than 600 people from finance, government and digital assets at M Resort Hotel. Several speakers have been…

TNG Digital had already won the scale game. It had Malaysia’s largest e-wallet user base and a brand that barely needed an introduction. A few months back, TNG eWallet had 26 million verified users, including 23 million Malaysians, or more than 85% of the country’s adult population. The Edge Malaysia described it as “by far” the country’s biggest e-wallet operator by user base. By the time Alan Ni sat down with us, he said that figure had climbed to 27 million. Still, the company was losing money. Around three years ago, TNG Digital had been operating for six years when…

Tap a multi-currency card in Tokyo, and the payment looks no different from any other card transaction. Behind the tap, however, is a different story as the issuer has to identify the purchase currency, find the matching wallet, decide whether another balance should cover a shortfall and apply foreign exchange where required.  The transaction must then be authorised, settled and reconciled across the programme’s records and external partners. More customers are making the kind of payments that expose this complexity.  Cross-border transactions on Asia-Pacific-issued Visa cards grew at more than twice the rate of domestic transactions in 2025, while spending…

MDEC and the Ministry of Digital have withdrawn support for Malaysia Blockchain Week (MYBW) 2026, following backlash over the event’s after-party booking of DJ and influencer Ms Pui Yi. In a bilingual LinkedIn post, MDEC said neither the agency nor the Ministry of Digital took part in planning, approving, or promoting the after-party, including selecting its guests. MDEC said it had directed organisers to remove all materials bearing the name, logo, or image of the Ministry of Digital, MDEC, and the Minister of Digital. The agency said claims that it or the ministry approved, endorsed, or held any connection to…

Malaysia Blockchain Week (MYBW) 2026 has apologised via its LinkedIn post after Malaysian social media users criticised its decision to book DJ and influencer Ms Pui Yi for the event’s official after-party. The backlash surfaced days before the two-day conference, which runs from 29 to 30 July at the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur. ACTIV8 will organise MYBW 2026 and has scheduled the after-party for 30 July at ING Live KL, with promotional material advertising a “special guest DJ set by Ms Pui Yi.” MYBW lists access to the official after-party among the benefits for pass holders, subject to capacity.…

Tan Sri Tay Ah Lek did not just top the ranking of the highest-paid bank CEOs in Malaysia in 2025. Public Bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) finished well ahead of everyone else, with RM64.76 million in total disclosed remuneration. Maybank President and Group CEO Khairussaleh Ramli followed at RM15.19 million. Third place was much tighter, with CIMB Group CEO Novan Amirudin receiving RM11.74 million, only RM571,000 more than Hong Leong Bank’s Kevin Lam who sits fourth, but we’re not diving into that as this list covers the top 3 highest-paid bank CEOs in Malaysia for the year…

Sole proprietors do not always get treated well when they walk into a bank branch to ask for a loan, said Hildah Hamzah, Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer of GXBank. Some of them do not look the part, they do not sound the part, and the embarrassment of admitting they need help keeps many away from formal credit altogether. GXBank’s own lending data shows how many had been left outside the system. Of the digital bank’s MSME borrowers, 87% had never held a loan before, Hildah told Fintech News Network’s Fintech Fireside Asia podcast. Bank Negara Malaysia had also…

Malaysians are now spoilt for choice when it comes to digital banks, and the digital bank savings rate on offer is becoming a big reason to pick one over another. GXBank, Boost Bank, AEON Bank, Ryt Bank and KAF Digital Bank are all in the market, giving savers more places to park their money without opening a traditional branch-based account. The sector is no longer just about new app launches either. By the end of 2025, Malaysia’s digital banks had collectively served 2.4 million customers and held RM4.2 billion in deposits, according to Bank Negara Malaysia. Around 65% of their…

Recent talks around the block have made it clear that banks do want AI, but the latest news has now asked them, should we? In May 2026, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery said generative AI will “destroy certain jobs” and create new ones, while urging employees not to fight the change. Standard Chartered has gone further, saying it plans to cut 15% of its corporate function roles by 2030 as it uses AI and automation to slim operations, improve productivity and lift returns. But those examples of how AI is affecting companies do not necessarily mean banks in Southeast Asia will…

For many small businesses, access to financing can still feel like a race against time. Demand may be there, customers may be spending, and stock may need to move quickly, but funding often arrives too late or not at all. Malaysia has made strong progress in financial inclusion, with 92% of Malaysians using digital financial services in 2024 and e-payment transactions per capita rising to 409. Yet that progress has not fully solved the financing challenge for small and medium enterprises. Applications still stall when smaller businesses cannot produce the documents, financial records or cash flow patterns lenders expect. Roughly…