Several financial institutions, including Public Bank and CIMB, have announced a waiver of the merchant discount rate (MDR) for vendors accepting payments via the DuitNow QR code platform.
CIMB has decided to postpone the MDR until the end of the year, while Public Bank will maintain the waiver until further notice.
Public Bank has communicated on its website that it would waive the following fees for QR payment acceptance, effective from Oct 1 until further notice.
It said merchants would enjoy fee waivers for categories such as payment acceptance via Current and Savings Accounts, e-wallets, and Maintenance Fee and API Integration Fee under the bank’s Enterprise Plan, a leading daily reported today (Sept 29).
MDR is a fee that merchants pay for accepting card payments. Credit card transactions under the Enterprise Plan will incur a charge of 0.25%.
The DuitNow QR service enables money transfers between banks and non-bank entities by scanning QR codes. It was established by Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) under Bank Negara’s Interoperable Credit Transfer Framework.
On Sept 28, Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) announced that the MDR waiver on vendors accepting payments via the DuitNow QR code platform will be lifted from Nov 1.
Paynet said the MDR which is collected is shared between the company and acquiring banks or third-party acquirers to cover network’s maintenance and expenses associated with onboarding merchants.
It said a reserve fund will be established with the MDR collected by Paynet to incentivise acquirers to not impose MDR on small merchants.
When addressing concerns on whether costs would be passed on customers, Paynet said prices of goods and services would not be affected after the implementation of MDR.
“Purchases made using credit and debit cards are already subject to MDR, yet are priced the same as cash purchases. Therefore, we anticipate the situation to be similar and do not expect the prices of goods and services to be affected by DuitNow QR purchases after MDR is imposed.”
It also clarified that a RM0.50 fee only applies to peer-to-peer fund transfers exceeding RM5,000 between personal QR codes, and not payments to merchants.
“This fee is unrelated to the aforementioned MDR and will not be imposed on the same transaction under any circumstances,” said PayNet.
BusinessToday says the decision to impose DuitNow QR transaction charges are likely feared to have domino implications for the country’s business sector, especially for small and medium traders as average traders are taken by surprise and do not agree with the recent announcement and consider it as a burden to them.
Worryingly, it is highly likely that the merchant will have to charge the user to cover the cost of the transaction charge.
In the current economic situation, many possibilities can happen and these need to be examined from all aspects including all levels of society.
If no action is taken and merchants end up charging customers, then the government’s target to make society cashless in the country will be destroyed because it is certain that they will choose to spend using cash.
