Disclaimer: I can be dead wrong here. Please don’t take this as intel and go long go short on companies. If you lose money it’s not my problem.
The big ones:
BigPay will win, their app is 5⁄5, they understand what people want, and we actually use it for not for points. Seems like BigPay aims to be the 1st neo bank in Malaysia.
FavePay is not an e-wallet, has its niche, and is sustainable. They are in the business of selling loyalty with cashbacks mostly paid for by merchants.
TnG will stay for other reasons but not win significant market share. The PayDirect is cool, but may be conceptually confusing to other people (so will it deduct from my card or wallet? Why aren’t they sharing same pool of balance?)
GrabPay will go zombie, except for own services. I reluctantly use it coz my credit card gives 8% cashback on all Grab txns. Update: UOB Malaysia is killing off Grab cashbacks in June, whoopsie.
Boost is subsidizing cashbacks for every transaction with investors’ money, has no merits on its own, and will die - just ask: if there is no cashback/promo, will you still use it?
Zombie list - they are backed by big companies and there is little point scraping the projects:
- Aeon (card stays, e-wallet gone)
Will die in 3 years - they need to cut loss:
- Boost
- Razer Pay
- TaPay
- Whatever not mentioned in this article.
Predictions largely same as what I posted on facebook in April, with extended explanations. Maybe in upcoming posts I will talk about why private QR e-wallets cannot be mainstream way of cashless in Malaysia.