KUALA LUMPUR: Visa International (Asia Pacific) expects to see a double digit growth in total billing transactions from 2017’s US$23 billion.
Visa Country Manager for Malaysia Ng Kong Boon said this double digit increase would be on the back of an expected healthy gross domestic domestic product (GDP) growth this year.
"We saw a total US$23 billion in billing transactions last year through the 30 million cards that we have in circulation," he said.
"We expect this transactions to grow in the double digit lower teens this year. We believe it will be a good year for consumer spending due to the healthy GDP growth of up to 5.3 per cent."
Ng also expects contactless payment usage in Malaysia to grow up to 50 per cent by 2020.
He said as of right now, the usage of contactless payments through the Visa payWave is hovering at 20 per cent.
"Given all the efforts that the government and Bank Negara Malaysia is doing, we do expect that the payWave penetration in Malaysia to hit between 25 to 30 per cent this year,” said Ng.
"We also expect the payWave penetration to hit 50 per cent by 2020. The momentum in adopting contactless payment has been strong and we are expecting this to carry us through 2020 and beyond.”
Ng had earlier alongside Corporate Information Travel Sdn Bhd (CIT) executive director Foo Sze Zhaun launched the ‘Pick A Trip’ travel Mobile app exclusively for Visa Malaysia cardholders to search, select and compare prices from various airlines and hotels worldwide.
“What set our app apart from the rest is that ‘Pick A Trip’ is 100 per cent Malaysian and we are catering specifically to the Malaysians looking to travel domestically or abroad,” said Foo.
He said the app, which is in the market currently, are not Malaysia-based.
"Since ‘Pick a Trip’ is Malaysian, we will be focusing on primarily Malaysian needs,” he said.
Foo added that he is aiming to have 50,000 downloads within the first 12 months of the launch.
“This is a conservative target considering that there are some 13 million Visa cards in Malaysia right now.”
Global Travel Intentions study conducted by Visa found that 72 per cent of Malaysians use their mobile devices to look up information in planning trips.
Kuala Lumpur-based CIT was founded in 1985 and have been managing the Travel Desk for Visa Malaysia since 2014.
Through this role, CIT is in charge of curating and offering exclusive travel deals for Visa credit and debit cardholders.