Willingly, unwillingly or unwittingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has dragged many Malaysians and businesses into a new way of life.
To use the most current trope, there is a new norm and the pandemic was very effective as a catalyst for a new order and one of them is e-payments, which was the result of the surge towards online and contactless payments as part of social distancing.
According to e-payment gateway provider Revenue Monster Sdn Bhd the definite drop in overall offline spending throughout the MCO, was balanced out by an increase in online spending on e-commerce and online food platforms.
The shift in the spending method was driven by the constant reminders to stay at home, which resulted in many Malaysians getting their meals and groceries delivered to their homes.
This demand for home delivery was in turn a catalyst for many businesses to transform themselves into online ones or miss out on being able to retain their customers or even stay in business.
Many who were initially hesitant to commit themselves towards having a digital presence had to finally make that leap of faith and have the confidence to accept e-payments.
Being able to accept e-payments opened up new opportunities for merchants as the new platform helped them to extend their reach to new market audience and by doing that, expand their revenue.
According to the Chief Executive Office of Revenue Monster, Amanda Chin, Malaysians took very quickly to the new way of paying for things and along with the change in consumer attitudes towards e-payments came the acceleration in the transformation of businesses operating procedures.
People are now more open to adapt to the digital world especially when it comes to digital payments, says Chin, so e-payments now play a very important role in the user journey.
The trend, she says, will continue with the new normal economy together with the positive support of the government with its efforts in pushing Malaysians to use digital wallets.
An example of this would be the recent initiative to provide RM50 in e-wallets as part of the PENJANA short-term economic recovery plan.
Companies that have yet to but want to begin their transformation can work with e-payment gateway providers such as Revenue Monster, which is a Malaysian-based financial technology company.
“We say we are More Than Payments because we strive to reinvent today’s businesses with cutting-edge fintech solutions and changing the way they connect and engage with customers,” said Chin.
“Our revolutionary digital solutions aim to help merchants find fresh perspectives across all their customer touchpoints, while enabling businesses to achieve better efficiency in their day-to-day operations.”
Revenue Monster helps merchants with its innovative payment acceptance via Unified Payment Solution to additional services that increase business engagement and profitability such as rewarding customers with e-vouchers and points, eventually creating the loyalty customer loop.
To help merchants deal with the challenges presented by all the regulations, Revenue Monster has introduced its “á la carte” product for merchants.
The “á la carte” online business operations solution easily transforms traditional retail businesses into online digital stores and allows a store’s site to be browsed and the product delivered to the customer for a seamless customer experiences from beginning to end.
At the same time, Revenue Monster has also introduced its RM E-Invoice, a flexible payment solution that provides effortless invoicing for online businesses and SMEs.
This allows merchants to collect payments anywhere at any time with zero-setup cost – a definite boost to merchants that did not have their own professional looking websites to collect payment in the easiest way while looking professional.
“One of the positive outcomes of the pandemic is that the digitalisation of the economy moved a little faster than scheduled and this was done without any regulations to push it. Businesses evolved out of necessity and that is usually the best way for adoption.”
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