[ UPDATE 29/09/2023 23:30 ] BNM announced that the DuitNow QR transaction fee will be waived for micro and small businesses.
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Maybank will continue to defer the DuitNow QR transaction fees on merchants until further notice. Public Bank has also announced that it will waive the fees indefinitely.
The national payment network operator, Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) yesterday confirmed that a transaction fee will indeed be imposed on merchants whenever they receive a DuitNow QR payment. Technically known as the merchant discount rate (MDR), the company said that this is nothing new and it was supposed to be implemented much earlier but was deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to that, PayNet also pointed out MDR is not a new idea as it has also been implemented for debit and credit card payments. The transaction fee for DuitNow QR transaction will be officially put in place starting 1 October 2023 but banks and acquirers can still waive it if they want to.
Meanwhile, Maybank said that it has not imposed any fees related to DuitNow QR so far and has assured merchants that the policy will remain as it is for the time being. The bank added that it will inform merchants ahead of time if there are any changes to the policy.
Similarly, Public Bank has also decided to waive the DuitNow QR transaction fee until further notice. In fact, the bank has announced this even before PayNet publicly revealed 1 October as the official implementation date.
This is with the exception of credit card-based DuitNow QR payment which will still be charged 0.25% of the transaction value. That being said, this type of payment is only available for merchants that signed up for the bank’s Enterprise Plan and even then, it is still up to them to accept such payments.
In addition to Maybank and Public Bank, another major local bank that has also waived the DuitNow QR transaction fees on merchants is CIMB. However, this will only last until 31 December 2023.
