KUALA LUMPUR, April 15 — The ePemula programme may have an immediate impact as the RM150 e-cash credit will likely be spent almost immediately and this will help stimulate the economy via consumer spending, Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd chief economist Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid said.
“Hence, there will be ripple effects. These online purchases will benefit the businesses as they are able to lock in some sales from the ePemula recipient. Total cash consideration is RM300 million. It will certainly have a positive spillover effect,” he told Bernama.
Nevertheless, he said the government might need to improve awareness of the benefit of e-commerce for rural businesses which have yet to leverage e-commerce.
“The proliferation of e-commerce has been extremely visible during pandemic. I suppose the level of adoption could be quite receptive as the rural can easily see the real benefit.
“It’s just now we may need to encourage them to expand their electronics or cyber footprint via training and awareness campaign,” he said.
The government allocated RM300 million for ePemula, an initiative to encourage cashless spending among youths aged 18 to 20 years as well as students in higher learning institutions.
Through the programme, RM150 would be credited to the e-wallet of about two million youths and eligible individuals would receive the e-credit through the selected e-wallets namely ShopeePay, BigPay, GrabPay and Touch ‘n Go Wallet.
e-commerce platform benefits to consumers
GrabPay Malaysia chief executive officer Priyanka Madan said to complement the government’s RM150 credit, GrabPay is adding additional RM210 cash vouchers.
She said in line with the essence of ePemula, the company has fractionalised the RM150 credit into smaller denominations of cash vouchers to provide eligible claimants more opportunities to spend prudently and benefit multiple businesses as they strive to recoup their offline sales whilst still reaping the benefits of the digital economy.
“Within the first three days of the programme launching, we observed that the common denomination of cash vouchers eligible claimants were utilising are RM20 and RM10, especially for food, health and beauty products and household essentials.
“Their spending has benefitted close to four thousand of GrabPay merchants nationwide,” she said.
Priyanka said since the launch of the GrabPay e-wallet, GrabPay has helped thousands of micro, small and medium-sized businesses transition online and accept cashless payments as a means to overcome the movement control restrictions.
“Prior to ePemula, GrabPay also supported other government-led efforts such as ePenjana, Shop Malaysia Online (SMO) and Retail Digitalisation Initiative (ReDI) to digitalise thousands of small businesses and help them embrace the digital economy whilst encouraging consumer spending,” she said.
Touch ‘n Go Digital Sdn Bhd (TNG) chief executive officer Alan Ni said TNG is always aligned with the government’s approach to ensure the next generation of Malaysian reap the benefits through financial support and safer transaction avenues.
Therefore, he said youths who claimed the RM150 ePemula credit with TNG eWallet would be rewarded with over RM200 worth of vouchers from its merchant partners.
“We have the largest network of physical retail merchants whereby youths and students may use the claimed credit more than 25 brands including online, retail, food and beverage (F&B), telco and transportation,” he said.
Time to improve digitalising businesses to e-commerce
Industries Unite, a coalition of 120 Malaysian small and medium enterprise (SME) associations, said ePemula programme is a good idea as businesses get the benefits via the spending through fund from e-wallet.
Co-founder Datuk David Gurupatham said businesses, however, should improve or start digitalising to e-commerce immediately to have an impact on their businesses.
“Government too could seriously think about digitalising and making the cooperatives more efficient.
“Capping purchases to mom and pop shops (a small, family-owned, or independent business) and essential items. On a digitalised platform and on a point of sale (POS) system designed for these small and micro businesses,” he said.
Furthermore, he said the e-cash credit could only be used for offline purchases when most of these youths spending patterns are online.
“In rural areas especially, youths may find it difficult to use this credit for offline purchases. Be that as it may encourage people, especially the next generation, to move into a cashless market,” he said.
He said China practiced cashless a decade ago and currently, lesser people in China use cash.
“It is, therefore, in the long term, a good signal from the government,” he said.
SMEs need to register e-wallet ID license with merchant
SME Association Malaysia national secretary-general Chin Chee Seong said the ePemula programme might give positive impacts on SMEs as the youth might use the incentive for household and necessities.
Chin said there are, however, some SMEs that are not exposed or ready to the use of e-wallet or cashless merchants.
He said he proposed the SMEs to register with the e-wallet merchant as preparation for the digitisation of the community through purchase transactions.
“They just have to register with e-wallet merchant to get ID license which is very easy on it.
“For micro SMEs who not expose with this (e-wallet), probably educate for all this people to register e-wallet license as a merchant is good for the company and intrapreneur,” he said.
The Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia (Samenta) chairman Datuk William Ng said digitalisation and automation are crucial for SMEs because as Malaysia transitioned into an endemic stage, the challenges for most SMEs are less about cash flow and more about improving on a razor-thin margin.
“We see many of our members transitioning into selling online in recent years and we are happy with the government’s initiative to drive digitalisation through the ePemula initiative.
“This helps to both cushion the rising costs and encourage more rapid adoption of digital payment by vendors, especially the SMEs,” he said.
He added that the limitation of purchases through ePemula to physical stores is an important step for the retail and food and beverage sector to recover and grow.
