Challenge

Our client, a national payment network; has an ongoing effort to advance Malaysia’s digital economy. As part of their initiative, they are consistently tracking insights on awareness, usage, preferences and sentiments of Malaysians towards digital payment solutions. The client aimed to uncover the drivers, motivations and barriers influencing the adoption and usage feasibility of digital payments from the general public’s perspective as well as the businesses focusing on SMEs. Findings from the study aimed to assist our client in refining their strategies and products/solutions to better meet the needs of the various levels to stimulate greater digital transformations in Malaysia.

Approach

To have a holistic view of the digital payment landscape, we adopted both quantitative and qualitative research approaches targeting both the general public and SMEs. Through a quantitative approach, we have adopted a hybrid online and face-to-face interview where we have engaged with close to 1,600 consumers and 500 decision makers of SMEs nationwide in the urban and rural settlements to quantify usage, attitude and perceptions towards digital payment solutions. At the same, we also engaged in Focus Group Discussion (FGD) sessions with the consumers and In-Depth Interviews (IDI) for the SMEs to further deep-dive into the ‘whys’.

Results

The results indicated a high awareness and high adoption of digital payment solutions among Malaysians. While cash is still widely used, digital payment is coming very close to the usage of cash with Gen Z opting to go fully digital when it comes to making payments. SMEs too are not left out where SMEs too are including digital payment solutions as their accepted payment mode (to cater to the usage of digital payment solutions among customers/consumers). As a value-add to our client, we also provide recommendations to further support our client on their journey to bringing a resilient, competitive and accessible-to-all digital economy in Malaysia.