Week 5: Mobile Payment System in Malaysia

Mobile Payment System is getting more and more popular in Malaysia as the frequent of using mobile phone is increasing in this technology world. Mobile payment system is the system that people make the money payment transaction such as utility bills, credit card bills, and loan repayments through a mobile device. The most famous mobile payment system in Malaysia is MobileMoneyWallet.

For more information, link to: http://www.mobile-money.com/

Mobile payment system becomes a practical means for merchants since users will only need to enter their mobile phone during checkout from merchant e-commerce website.

Encouragement of consumers to adopt this payment system:

1. Mobile Money helps to reduce the bottlenecks that created by cash, cheques and credit cards. Users are only using mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere via SMS.
   
2. This gives benefit to users to buy products online and pay the merchant using their mobile phone without being physically present at the store.


3. Mobile payment system is user friendly, it is safe and secure. User do not need to worry about the cheque or credit card handling problem and fraud, the system will conforms to the stringent requirement set by participating bank.


4. Mobile payment system also help user to avoid the trouble for long queues and looking for car parks. User can enjoy the super fast payment process by just make their transaction via SMS, website, or point-of-sale system. It helps user save up a lot of time.


5. There are no minimum monthly transactions or no any rental fees required. Users only need to pay very low transaction fee compare to what actually charge to credit card.

~wriiten by siew wan~

Credit Card Debt : Causes and Preventions

Credit card is a system of payment by using a small plastic card issued by the credit card company. Credit card flow by issuer lends money to the user of the credit card to purchase items from merchant then users pay backt he credit card company later.

Credit card debt arises when the customer has use credit card to purchase items or services. Besides that, there are some causes for credit card debts:

1. Consumer overspent because they keep thinking them can pay off back the debt in future by monthly installment hence it has increase the debt owe
2. Consumer keep late payback the debts and causes the interest charged on the debts keep accumulated until the consumer unable to clear off the debts
3. Poor money management, consumer doesn’t plan their money spending carefully and simply spend their money on something unnecessarily.
4. Consumer can get more than one credit card because credit card was easy to apply. Because of this, the consumers can unlimited use the credit card to purchase item which causes its debt keep increase.
5. High interest rate charge by credit card company has caused the rise of credit card debt because the user unable to pay off the debts

Prevention method from credit card debts:
1. Keep good record which means consumer should make sure them don’t take on more debt that them can safely afford to pay back.
2. Don’t overextend which means consumer must make sure that their debt to asset stay within manageable levels. Many professionals recommend that your level of indebtedness should not exceed your cash on hand
3. Budget carefully which means consumer should anticipate levels of indebtedness and plan your monthly payments. Whenever them make budget must make sure include of “Balloon Payments to pay off large amount of debt at once.
4. Carefully select credit card which offer advantageous interest rate because it will help the consumer keep their payments within manageable limits.
5. Consumer should make payment on times because late payment can reduce consumer is credit rating and put them in default on some type of loan and it may trigger an increase in interest rate consumer pay on the debt and cause their cost of borrowing increases. In order to avoid such problem consumer should make payment in times.

The Application of Pre-paid Cash Card for Consumers

Pre-paid cash card is a payment card that allows users to pre-load any amount into it and make purchases up to that amount. Most of the pre-paid cash cards are issued under Master Card and Visa Electron. The examples of pre-paid cash card are Touch n Go card and Octopus card.

As we know, pre-paid cash card provides wide acceptance since it can be used internationally. In UK, the personal information such as owners’ name will be printed on the card. Moreover, pre-paid cash card is not like credit card, the users still can apply for the card even they have bad credit record, it is a great option for those people that have poor credit history before.

There have some advantages provided for the using of pre-paid cash card. Firstly, the pre-paid cash card would not get users into the debt because the transactions only will be made up to the amount that they load into the card. It can prevent users in overspend the money since the users can only spend what they have paid in. Most of the card enables users to manage their account through online or via an interactive voice response telephone service, they can check the balances easily. In case the card is lost or being stolen, the remaining balances will be transferred to a new account and the users will get a replacement card.

However, there also have some disadvantages for the using of pre-paid cash card. It is important for the users to aware of where they shopping because some websites will befool the users and the users may pay for the products that they never receive. As a result, online shopping through the pre-paid cash card is not encouraged unless the users having sufficient security information about the website.

As a conclusion, pre-paid cash card make the users more convenient in their daily routine life, however it still bring some disadvantages to the users. Users should be more careful in using the pre-paid cash card, especially for the online shopping. Sufficient security information about the website is needed when the users are consider to make purchases through the website.