AmBank group CEO Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir
SUBANG JAYA: Ambank Group is targeting RM188 million in credit card spending for the first year, an average of RM15 million spending per month, with the newly-launch corporate cards.
Group chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir said the two cards were designed to offer a simple way for businesses to pay for purchases and manage their daily business expenses while making it ever more rewarding.
"The group is seeing a 24 per cent upward trend in total spending by its credit card holders for the financial year (FY) 2022 versus FY2021 which is an outstanding record.
"Hence we are seizing the opportunity to launch the better corporate cards with greater benefits to capture the spend from business to business segment,” he told reporters after the launch of two Visa business cards namely AmBank Visa Infinite Business and Visa Platinum Business Card here today.
He said these cards would be an ideal option to serve the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector in addressing the challenges of accessing spending flexibility as a viable financing option, especially at a time when the SMEs are still gradually recovering from setbacks of the pandemic.
Sulaiman said according to Visa’s SME Digital Banking Study in Malaysia, 79 per cent of SMEs faced business operation challenges while 57 per cent experienced digitisation challenges.
Therefore, he said the newly launched cards would come in handy to help SMEs in the form of payment, helping them to streamline and consolidate corporate expenses under one account.
Meanwhile, the event also see AmBank inked a two-year strategic partnership with Persatuan Usahawan Maju Malaysia (PUMM), a non-profit organisation with over 3,000 business owners from various business sectors.
Commenting on the partnership, Sulaiman said AmBank would be the exclusive banking partner for PUMM.
"The partnership will pave the way for the bank to work with PUMM members in order to strengthen their financial awareness and enable them to more easily gain access to financing in addition to provide an understanding of the various products and tools that AmBank has to help businesses optimise,” he said.
On the latest calls to grant moratorium to SMEs, Sulaiman said giving a blanket moratorium is not appropriate with the current environment as businesses and the economy are picking up.
"Generally, the issues among the businesses now are more about requirements and needs. They need more working capital, to sell more and earn more and also issues on labour shortage to be resolved.
"In fact, we are seeing the call for moratorium among businesses is less now unlike during the pandemic which businesses are not able to operate.
"For those still affected, probably this need to be looked at individually and AmBank is ready for this. We see different solutions are required at different times,” he added. - Bernama
