Malaysian payment solutions provider and merchant acquirer Gkash has announced that it now directly connects to Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) as a direct participant. What this means is a more direct and streamlined connection between the two, which in turn means fewer payment-participant layers, giving the former more control over integration and transaction operations.
Through Gkash, merchants can support DuitNow QR, MyDebit and FPX payments. That’s three of arguably the most common payment methods locally, and by connecting them with its broader portfolio of online and in-store payment solutions, the company is building towards a more unified payment experience for merchants. The company says that “businesses can focus on how they want to accept payments across their sales channels, while Gkash manages the payment technology and connectivity behind those transactions”.
What Does All This Even Mean?
For the average consumer, this would not mean much, especially when everything is going smoothly. But for when things get rocky, Gkash being directly connected to PayNet means one less point of failure – with the third-party intermediary layer removed, there’s no worry of that company’s systems going down and affecting the transaction process. In the same vein, when the transaction process still fails, it’s easier to narrow down the source of the problem.
There’s also the overall benefit of having to deal with less fragmentation. Being a direct participant of PayNet means supporting the three aforementioned commonly used payment methods. That said, a couple of months back, Bank Negara Malaysia announced plans to phase out proprietary QR payment networks over the course of two years. The plan is that by 30 June 2028, there’s only the one interoperable QR payment ecosystem that consumers will need to deal with. So that problem with QR payments was going to go away anyway, and it wasn’t really a problem with the other two.
