VISA EYES DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH
Credit and debit card giant also expects payWave penetration to reach up to 30pc this year
CREDIT and debit card giant Visa expects double-digit growth in total billing transactions in Malaysia from US$23 billion (RM89.7 billion) last year.
Visa country manager for Malaysia, Ng Kong Boon, said the double-digit increase would be on the back of an expected healthy gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year.
“We saw a total of US$23 billion in billing transactions last year through 30 million cards in circulation,” he said.
“We expect the transactions to grow in the double-digit lower teens this year. We believe it will be a good year for consumer spending due to the healthy GDP growth of up to 5.3 per cent.”
Ng also expects the company’s contactless payment transaction rate to grow to 50 per cent by 2020.
He said as of now, the use of Visa payWave was hovering at 20 per cent.
“With the government and Bank Negara Malaysia’s efforts, we expect payWave penetration in Malaysia to hit between 25 and 30 per cent this year,” said Ng.
“We expect the payWave penetration to hit 50 per cent by 2020. The momentum in adopting contactless payment has been strong and we expect this to carry us through 2020 and beyond.”
Ng and Corporate Information Travel Sdn Bhd (CIT) executive director Foo Sze Zhaun earlier launched the “Pick A Trip” travel mobile app, which is exclusively for Visa Malaysia cardholders to search, select and compare prices from airlines and hotels worldwide.
“What sets our app apart from the rest is that ‘Pick A Trip’ is 100 per cent Malaysian and we are catering specifically to Malaysians looking to travel domestically or abroad,” said Foo.
Foo aims to record 50,000 downloads within the first 12 months of the launch.
“This is a conservative target, considering that there are some 30 million Visa cards in Malaysia right now.”
A Global Travel Intentions study conducted by Visa found that 72 per cent of Malaysians use their mobile devices to look up information in planning trips.
Kuala Lumpur-based CIT was founded in 1985 and has been managing the travel desk for Visa Malaysia since 2014.
Through this role, CIT is in charge of curating and offering exclusive travel deals for Visa credit and debit cardholders.