KUALA LUMPUR: Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) continues to see strong growth in its usage with transaction volumes that are targeted to exceed six billion this year.
This figure is a growth of some 35% or so from the previous year’s figure of 4.4 billion, according to the national payments network and shared central infrastructure operator’s group chief executive officer Farhan Ahmad.
“The transaction values are expected to grow further with the economy. I don’t foresee cashless payments will fully replace physical cash – at least not in my lifetime.
“But the cost of handling cash is much greater compared to using the cashless option, especially from the perspective of the business owners which include small and medium enterprises. The option to settle with cash payments should always be there,” Farhan said on the sidelines of PayNet’s media appreciation gathering yesterday.
PayNet is a not-for-profit entity that operates the main banking and payment gateways including Interbank GIRO (IBG), JomPAY, FPX, DuitNow, DuitNow QR, shared ATM Network and MEPS ATM, etc.
It counts Bank Negara as its largest shareholder and is also jointly owned by 11 other local financial institutions.
“I believe the key to growth is to ensure better security so that people will be confident of using our systems. That’s why our focus is now on artificial intelligence (AI) –as this frontier is changing the fraud landscape,” he said.
“For example, the AI-superimposed character impersonating me can do a video call with a loved one to ask him/her to transfer some money to a third party account. And this is increasingly happening nowadays even in other countries. We are working with several university partners globally to keep abreast and on top of this matter,” Farhan added.
He said hackers now could identify people very easily and these information was widely available and could actually be bought on the “dark-web”.
“The question for us now is how can we protect Malaysian users against these things. Although it may be a tad late now as the information is already available on the dark web, how we secure our newer data from now on is key,” he said.
PayNet’s shareholders do not receive dividends and any surplus profit is re-invested into the company to develop the country’s financial market infrastructures and payment eco-systems to be resilient and up-to-date.
