New digital MSB players expected

KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Negara Malaysia is currently facilitating two companies seeking to provide digital money services business (MSB) solutions through the Bank’s Regulatory Sandbox, include Peer-to-Peer (P2P) arrangements leveraging on mobile application platforms.

According to Bank Negara’s 2016 Annual Report, the move was to facilitate near real-time matching of customer transactions for currency exchange and money transfers.

Reacting to the report, Malaysian Association Of Money Services Businesses (MAMSB) president Ramasamy K Veeran said a few MSB companies were currently offering online remittance services and remittance via mobile applications and these companies were seeing significant year-on-year increase in the volume of remittance turnover via online channels.

“We believe the adoption of online remittance service should see strong growth.

“In this regard, employers of foreign workers have an important role to play in the migration of salary payments from cash to bank account or e-wallet, which will contribute towards moving to cashless payments,” he told NST Business yesterday.

He said some of MSB players had obtained e-money licence to offer mobile wallet services targeted to the migrant workers.

Bank Negara report said remittance channelled through nonbank remittance service providers accelerated by about six-fold from RM100 million in 2013 to RM653 million last year, a trend driven by higher remittances by small and medium enterprises.