Direct bank-in of e-cash may be considered, says Guan Eng

Eligible smartphone users will receive a RM30 government cash payment into their e-wallets.

BUTTERWORTH: The government is willing to consider making direct payment of the RM30 e-Tunai Rakyat cash awards by bank deposit, finance minister Lim Guan Eng said today.

The RM30 grant is being made to eligible Malaysians through selected e-wallet operators. However, for those without smartphones, the government would consider by banking the allocation into the bank accounts of beneficiaries, he said.

“We can study the matter in the future,” he told reporters while on a constituency visit today.

“Let’s run this programme first (e-Tunai Rakyat) and look at its development. If there are many complaints about this matter (the request to bank in the RM30), we will consider them,” he said.

The payments would be made to the bank accounts of beneficiaries who are also recipients of the Cost of Living Allowance provided by the government.

The e-Tunai Rakyat programme began on Jan 15 and enables about 15 million eligible Malaysians to each claim RM30 through e-wallet operators Grab, Boost and Touch ‘n Go.

Up to noon today, a total of 1.7 million applications had been received, of which 1.32 million had been approved and almost RM40 million spent, said Lim.

“This is a government initiative to promote the digital payments system as an important step towards a cashless society. The cashless payment system is a better, more efficient way to ensure that everything can be done authentically, and in an orderly manner, without any element of abuse or corruption,” he added. - FMT