By Xavier Kong
WITH the rollout of the e-Tunai Rakyat incentive programme on Jan 15, the selected e-wallet partners have seen a surge in users seeking registration and verification.
This surge was beyond expectations, with users taking to social media to air their grievances about not being able to make their claims under the programme when the platforms were unable to handle the traffic.
Ignatius Ong, CEO of Touch N Go Digital Sdn Bhd, confirmed that there was a “huge surge” on its app today, with an extremely high volume of users seeking to claim their RM30 from the initiative.
“We had forecast the heavy load, but it was off the charts early this morning,” he said.
The e-wallet vendors for the programme – Touch N Go Digital, Boost, and GrabPay – were selected as part of an initiative by the government to move towards a cashless society. The e-Tunai Rakyat initiative was announced during the tabling of Budget 2020 on Oct 11, 2019.
Under this initiative, the government had allocated RM450 mil to Khazanah Nasional Bhd, the sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia, to stimulate the use of e-wallets among citizens, with the e-wallet partners announced in late December 2019.
Users who successfully claim the RM30 one-off digital stimulus have until March 14 to use the RM30, which is non-transferable as well. – Jan 15, 2020
