VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
I came to love using my Touch ‘n Go e-wallet while I was visiting Malaysia. And I ended up with so much experience using this e-wallet in my day-to-day life that I decided to make a video about how I navigated this new cashless world and almost NEVER used cash anymore. I paid for nearly everything with just my smartphone, and I shot a video about that.
And I started thinking that someone planning a trip to Malaysia might watch that video and then want even MORE information, and they would to the Touch ‘n Go website. The idea is that they can get all the official up-to-date information there. With that in mind, I went to the Touch ‘n Go website myself and I recorded my thoughts and comments as I navigated all the various pages on the website.
I’m hoping that I can provide some insight into Touch ‘n Go and help other foreigners take advantage of what e-wallets can offer in the modern cashless society of Malaysia.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug. In this video, I’m going to be doing something a little bit unusual. I’m going to be visiting and going over the Touch ‘n Go website. I recently posted a video about using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in Malaysia as a foreign visitor. And I started thinking that maybe somebody watched that video, they’re planning a trip to Malaysia and they start thinking, “Huh, that whole Touch ‘n Go business sounds pretty interesting. I’m going to look into it.” And they might go to the Touch ‘n Go website to get more information and see what it’s all about. So, I went to the Touch ‘n Go website myself and I started going over it and I thought, “Huh, I’ll bet I can help people interpret what they’re seeing here on the website.” Going over some of the information because some of it isn’t entirely clear. Some of it seems very misleading, and I thought I could break it down for people and help them on their path to becoming a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet user.
But before I dive into the website, let’s do a little bit of a refresher. What is Touch ‘n Go? Well, for a foreign visitor to Malaysia, you can think of Touch ‘n Go as basically three different products. The first and the main product that I’m going to be talking about is this, the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. And if you’re not familiar with e-wallets, hopefully I can break it down and make it a bit easy to understand for you. An e-wallet is just like a regular wallet except it’s on your phone. It’s an app. You download it to your phone and then you put money into your e-wallet and then you go out into Malaysia and you buy things and you pay for things using your e-wallet but not by handing over money simply by opening up a scanner and scanning a QR code. Then you enter the amount you want to pay and that money is transferred from your e-wallet to the e-wallet of the business through the QR code. It’s very simple and if you want to see how that is done, you can check out my video where I go into it in detail.
So that’s the first product, the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, but they also have a Touch ‘n Go enhanced card. And this card is connected to your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. This card is mainly used for transportation. So you can use this to scan into the MRT system, onto a bus, onto a train. You scan in, scan out, and the train fare, the bus fare, whatever it is, is automatically deducted from your Touch ‘n Go enhanced card. It’s extremely convenient and I love using it almost as much as I love using the e-wallet. And the great thing is you can connect them so that when it comes time to top up your card, you don’t have to go to a store or to any kind of a kiosk. All you need to do using NFC is you can top up your Touch ‘n Go card directly from the balance on your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. So they can be connected.
So you’ve got Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, Touch ‘n Go card, like a transportation card, and recently they introduced the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. And this is a fascinating new addition because it functions as a true credit card. It has a credit card number. It has an expiry date. It has the three-digit security code just like any regular credit card that you’ve used in your life. The difference is that when you buy something or pay for something using this Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card, the money is deducted automatically from your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet balance. So you don’t run up a bill on your credit card and pay it off at the end of the month. The money has to be in your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in order to use this card. And then the money is deducted from that balance automatically. And you can use this card to make withdrawals at ATMs. And the withdrawal comes directly out of your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet.
So that’s the basic idea here. Three products, the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, the Touch ‘n Go transportation card, and the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. So, with all of that in mind, let’s go over to the website and see what we can learn.
All right, here is the main Touch ‘n Go website. You can see the name up here, touchngo.com.my of course my stands for Malaysia. The first thing to notice is that there are two sections listed. This is Touch ‘n Go and that covers physical cards, things like that to do with transportation. And this section is about the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, which you use to scan QR codes out in the real world and pay for things. The important thing to note is that you don’t have to use both of them. You can use just one or the other. If all you want to do is ride around on the MRT, on the buses, the KTM trains, you can just get the Touch ‘n Go enhanced card. But if you also want to get the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet and pay for things by scanning QR codes, you can download the app to your phone and open an account. And then once you have both of them, you can link them so they work together. But you don’t absolutely need to. You can use just the Touch ‘n Go card on its own or you can use the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet on its own. It’s up to you and whatever your needs are.
Starting on the main page, we start scrolling down. And the first thing you’re going to see is RFID. This is not something you need to worry about. This is mainly for Malaysian drivers. It allows them to use Touch ‘n Go to pay for highway tolls, parking, things like that. So, we scroll past that and we get to something about the Touch ‘n Go charm. And this is quite interesting, but we’re going to come back to this in a minute.
Going down further, this is the section about the Touch ‘n Go card. So, let’s click on the buy now button, and that will give us more detailed information. Now, they call this the enhanced Touch ‘n Go card because it has NFC technology built into it. And with NFC, you can top it up directly from your phone using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet app. That’s why they call it enhanced. It costs 10 ringgit to buy this card. That’s about $2.50 US and the card is valid for 7 years. But there’s something interesting down below. So, let’s scroll down here and you’ll see that on the left they’re listing the Touch ‘n Go card classic edition and here in the middle is the enhanced Touch ‘n Go card with NFC technology.
I wanted to point this out because it’s a little bit confusing. They’re implying that you need to make a choice. Do you want the classic card or the enhanced? And in fact, the classic card has been phased out. It is no longer available. They keep it on the website because a lot of people already have this card, so they have information about it. But if you come to Malaysia for your holiday and you get a Touch ‘n Go card, you are automatically going to get the enhanced version. You don’t need to choose between classic or enhanced. And as I said, the advantage to the NFC technology is that you can check the balance on your card just using your smartphone and the e-wallet app. And you can reload the card directly from the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet app on your phone. And that’s all I wanted to point out about the Touch ‘n Go card.
Let’s go back and take a quick look at the charm. So, scrolling up, here’s the page about the Touch ‘n Go charm. Let’s click on the buy now button, and that will bring us to a page with more information. And as they say here, it is just like a Touch ‘n Go card, but it works like a charm. And that means this charm is exactly like the Touch ‘n Go card, but in a different form factor. And that makes more sense if we scroll down to the bottom and you can actually see what they look like. So here is a Christmas charm, a bunny charm, and a cat charm. I don’t know if they have other options, but you can see that it is essentially a key ring. And that means you can hang it directly from your phone, from a knapsack, from a lanyard. You could attach your keys to it.
And the advantage to that is you don’t always have to take your wallet out of your pocket because the normal Touch ‘n Go card is essentially the same form factor as a credit card. So when you go into the MRT or onto a bus, you take your wallet out of your pocket, take the card out of the wallet, scan it, put it back into your wallet, put your wallet back in your pocket, and you do that all day long. Perhaps you would find that inconvenient and then you could get a charm instead and it would always be available on the outside and you could scan going into the MRT or onto a bus just by using this charm. And the charm, as I said, functions exactly like the card. You can top it up from your e-wallet just like the card. You can check the balance on the charm using the e-wallet app. So, it’s just a fun thing I thought I would point out that you could pick up if you thought this might be convenient for you.
So, now let’s jump ahead to the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet section. Just click here and it brings us to the e-wallet. The first section here is about using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet outside of Malaysia in other countries. We’re going to come back to that in a minute. Let’s scroll down to this section, which is all about using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet inside Malaysia. Meaning you just go about your daily life as a tourist enjoying your holiday and then when you want to pay for something, a product in a store or a service, all you need to do is take out your phone, open the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet app, scan a QR code, and enter the payment. And that is what it is all about.
To get more information, just click on the discover more button. And what I wanted to focus on is this chart. And it is a little bit misleading because it says here at the top, these are the countries eligible for Touch ‘n Go e-wallet registration. And it lists Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. And it seems to be implying that these are the only countries that are eligible to open an e-wallet account. But that’s not exactly true. This page is not about nationality. It’s about which foreign phone numbers they can send verification codes to. So if you are from Cambodia, you could open an e-wallet account using a Cambodian phone number and they will send the OTP security code to that phone number. You can do the same with an Indonesian phone number, a Filipino phone number, etc.
But this doesn’t mean the e-wallet registration is only available to people from these countries. It’s a bit misleading because you can also open an e-wallet account with a Malaysian phone number. Therefore, as a normal tourist, you would probably fly into the airport and then you would pick up a local SIM card. And with a Malaysian SIM card, you have a Malaysian phone number and you can use that Malaysian phone number to open a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet account.
Scrolling down a bit farther, we’ll see something that kind of illustrates what I’m talking about. Here are some simple instructions for how you get started with the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. How to sign up. And it says, “Select your country from the drop-down menu. Then key in your mobile number.” But here on the list, you’ll see at the very top it also lists Malaysia. So, if you enter Malaysia as a tourist and you get a Malaysian SIM card, you can use that number to open a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. You just select Malaysia as your country and then you enter the phone number. Again, this list is not really about nationality. It’s not saying you have to be from one of these countries in order to open an e-wallet account. It’s just saying these are the phone numbers you can use and you can use a Malaysian phone number that you got using a SIM card. And that’s all I wanted to say about this section.
Let’s go back to the global section using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in other countries. Spend global like a local. Click on the discover more button and we can get more information about this. And if we scroll down, there are some links here. This one is about overseas QR payment. Click on that and this gives you information about using your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet outside of Malaysia. And there’s some very helpful information here and also a little bit of misleading information. Let’s go over both.
So, for example, it shows that you can use the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in these countries. And when you go to those countries, you look for certain QR codes. So, if you go to mainland China, look for this logo and this type of QR code and you can scan this using your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. If you go to Thailand, you can scan the same Alipay code or you can look for the PromptPay QR codes. And this is what they look like. If you go to Indonesia, you look for this QR code from the QRIS system in Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore. So, it gives you very helpful information about what kind of QR codes to look for. You see these codes, you know that you can use the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet there.
However, there’s also a little bit of misleading information here. I’m going to use Indonesia as an example because I’m most familiar with that. And when you click on Indonesia, it says here, where can I use Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in Indonesia and it shows you all of these famous logos KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Lazada, etc. And you might get the impression that these are the only places where you can use your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. But that is not true. You can use your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet anywhere that you see the QRIS code that they have on display here. And in Indonesia currently, over 40 million merchants are signed up with QRIS and present this code inside their shop. So in reality, Touch ‘n Go works anywhere you see a QRIS code, including tiny local shops, street food stalls, museums, traditional coffee shops. Anywhere that you see the QRIS code, you can use the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. You don’t have to go only to these big famous brands.
Scrolling down from here, there’s something else I wanted to point out here. There’s a section talking about the two ways you can pay using overseas QR payment. And for the first method where you scan the merchant’s QR code, it says step one, you can now change your country homepage and two, select your destination country. So, what they’re saying is that you can use this little drop-down menu up at the top left, you can see it currently says Malaysia, but if you click on that down arrow, it will open up a menu where you can choose another country. So, if you’re in Indonesia, you can select Indonesia. And what that will do is change the look of the app. The skin will look a little bit different. The buttons will look a little bit different and most importantly the currency will change and they don’t explain that here very clearly but the money that is in your e-wallet never actually changes your balance is in Malaysian ringgit and it stays in Malaysian ringgit until you spend it so even if you change this for example to Indonesia instead of listing Malaysian ringgit. It will list Indonesian rupiah, but that is just a convenience for you. The money itself is still being held in Malaysian ringgit. It’s just telling you the equivalent value in Indonesian rupiah.
Scrolling down a bit farther, we get to the frequently asked questions about overseas payments. And there are a couple of things here that I wanted to point out. This is an important one. It’s what I was just talking about. What does the amount displayed in a foreign currency on my e-wallet mean? And it explains that the amount you see is an estimate of your e-wallet balance but in the local currency and this is calculated used on the current exchange rate from Alipay for that country. So here is a good example. They have selected South Korea as their country and now the balance of the e-wallet is being shown in Korean won and that will be the equivalent of the amount of Malaysian ringgit and you can see both at the same time. But as I think it’s worth repeating that even though you’re now seeing Korean won listed, the money itself hasn’t changed. It is still being held in the e-wallet in Malaysian ringgit. All you’ve done is change how it appears in the e-wallet app by changing the country. But the money itself doesn’t change at all.
And here is one that is probably quite important. What is overseas transaction conversion fee? And I think people would be interested to know this. You’re basically asking how much is it going to cost me? And what they say here is that since April 25th, 2024, they charge a 1% overseas transaction conversion fee and that is included in the daily exchange rate. So you don’t see this 1% fee separately. It is just built into the exchange rate that you end up paying.
And here is another item that might be interesting. Is there a limit on the amount I can spend using Touch ‘n Go e-wallet abroad? And what we see here is a chart with user tiers. And they have daily limits, monthly limits, account limits, things like that, but for different types of accounts. And they list light, pro, and premium. I’m pointing this out because this might be confusing to some people and you might think, “Oh, when I open an e-wallet account, I have to decide, do I want the light or the pro or the premium?” But you don’t have to make that decision. In fact, when you use the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, you will never see these words. You don’t even know what kind of account you have. If you really want to know, you actually have to reverse engineer it. So, you can go to your account settings, go to the general tab, and then you can see your limits for your account. And if you see that you have a daily limit of 2,000 ringgit, then you know you have a light account. If you have a daily limit of 5,000 ringgit, then you can say, “Oh, I must have either a pro or a premium account.” But in the e-wallet app itself, you can’t tell. You don’t actually see these words. In fact, you don’t have to worry about this at all. All you have to do is sign up for a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet account, go through the steps, and based on the information that you input, you will be assigned one of these three types. But all of this is happening in the background. It is all happening under the hood. You don’t have to decide anything. You don’t have to choose anything. And as I said, you will never see these words. So after you listen to me talking about this, you never have to think about it again.
There’s one more item on this page that might be interesting. It’s this one here. Does cross-border payments happen in real time? And the answer here is yes. When you use your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, whether in Malaysia or overseas, the amount is deducted from your e-wallet balance instantly. You don’t have to wait for it to happen. It’s not like you’re going to get a bill at the end of the month. Everything is happening in real time. You scan the QR code, you enter the amount, you hit confirm, and boom, it’s instantly deducted from your e-wallet and transferred to the e-wallet of the merchant or into their bank account. Everything happens in real time.
There’s one more thing I want to talk about and that is the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. So, let’s go back here and we can see Touch ‘n Go e-wallet Visa card. Let’s learn more about that. So, this is what the card looks like and it’s a fascinating thing. It’s kind of a new product that Touch ‘n Go came out with. And as I said, it functions just like a regular credit card in that it has a credit card number. It has an expiry date and it has a three-digit security code and you can use that information to enter onto online websites and pay for things just like a regular credit card. The difference is it’s a prepaid card, meaning that the money is deducted automatically from your e-wallet balance. That’s the key to this card.
But what I wanted to talk about is on the next page, let’s click on the take me there button to learn more. And if we scroll down, you will see that there are now actually two different versions of this card. And this is a brand new thing that Touch ‘n Go just introduced. So there is the basic card, which we’ve already talked about, and now there is the travel card. The differences are, as you can see, the basic card is for everyday use, and you get 1% cash back when you use it overseas. And when you make a withdrawal from an ATM using this card, which you can do, it costs 10 ringgit per withdrawal. And to buy the card, your application fee is 10 ringgit.
The travel card, the new version, is best for overseas travelers. And you get 3% or up to 3% cash back. And you get one free international ATM withdrawal per month. I think that is the important thing to note. After your one free one per month, then they charge you 10 ringgit per withdrawal. And the application fee is 15 ringgit. A launch promo. That makes me think the price might go up in the future, but it is currently just five ringgit more expensive than the basic card. So, I guess you would decide for yourself which one you would want to get.
And that’s it for the website. Remember, it’s touchngo.com.my. That will tell you you are on the official page. And there are two areas of the website. There is the Touch ‘n Go section and then the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet section. So all the information you need is here. I guess one final thing I’ll point out is that the Touch ‘n Go universe is bigger than what I’ve talked about. There are a lot more products that they offer. As you can see, there’s a menu item here for businesses. There’s a lot of financial products that they offer, but for now, all I wanted to talk about were the three products that are most important for a foreign visitor. The Touch ‘n Go card, the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card, and of course, the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet.