Merchantrade Asia has announced that it has added Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet support for the Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid card. If you’re a cardholder, then that’s potentially one less card to carry around once you’ve tied it to either, or indeed both, of the digital wallets. And even if you still take it around with you, it’s certainly one that you no longer need to pull out whenever you need to pay for something.
The setup process can be done via the Merchantrade Money app, or from either of the aforementioned digital wallets. Beneath the surface, the feature makes use of the Visa Token Service rather than card numbers, which also acts as an additional layer of fraud protection. Of course, using it this way retains all the benefits of using a Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid card. This means being able to load it up with multiple different currencies, and having the right one used with every transaction, without incurring any foreign exchange markups.
Because the process is still similar to using the card itself, it saves you the potential hassle of having to scan QR codes when a stable mobile internet connection is not reliably available. The company said that this is the natural next step, as “Malaysians already treat their phones as the default payment tool thanks to QR”. It also claims to be “the first homegrown e-wallet in Malaysia to bring native phone-tap payments to its users”.
Cindy Loo, Executive Vice President for Merchantrade Money, said “our focus is making payments easier and removing friction at checkout, whether our users are paying down the street in Klang or travelling overseas. Integrating the Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid Card with Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet gives our customers a whole new level of convenience … QR will always have its place in Malaysia, but this gives our cardholders a serious speed upgrade”.
