KUALA LUMPUR: MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong has urged the government to make it mandatory for all banks to make payments to merchants within 48 hours of receiving payments.
The move, he said, would increase cash flow for merchants and the economy will benefit from increased velocity of money.
"In line with the increasing use of ePayments and IT automation, the banks should no longer use the excuse of public holidays and weekends to delay payments to merchants.
"After all, banks do not stop charging interest on loans during public holidays and weekends. So, why should they benefit from the free float when they delay payments to merchants?
"As we are aware, there are 104 days of Saturdays and Sundays in the year 2024 and up to 25 days of federal and state public holidays," said Wee in a Facebook post today.
Wee, who is also MCA president and Ayer Hitam member of parliament, said that the total e-payment that went through the banking system was about RM1.4 trillion.
"So the banks make a lot of money from the free float from delaying payments to merchants on top of the merchant fees when collecting e-payments."
Bank Negara Malaysia in its Annual Report 2021 released on March 30, 2022, revealed that the e-payment services continued to gain further traction when it recorded a higher growth of 30.2 per cent to 7.2 billion transactions in 2021.
In 2020, it recorded 5.5 billion transactions (13.5 per cent).