VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
🇲🇾 Stuck without cash? Tired of scanning QR codes? This card changed everything for me in Malaysia.
In this video, I dive deep into the Touch ‘n Go Prepaid Visa Card—the third major product from Touch ‘n Go that links directly to your eWallet. As a foreigner living in Malaysia, I rely heavily on the TnG eWallet, but this physical card has taken convenience and security to a whole new level.
I’ll show you:
✔️ What it is: A prepaid Visa card that pulls funds directly from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet balance.
✔️ How to get it: The simple application process via the app (open to tourists & foreigners!).
✔️ 3 KEY Benefits: Use it anywhere Visa is accepted globally, withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide, and make contactless “tap & go” payments (Visa Paywave).
✔️ Live Demos: I’ll withdraw cash from a Maybank ATM and make a contactless payment at 7-Eleven.
✔️ Real-Life Emergency: How this card literally saved me when my Canadian credit card was cancelled due to fraud overseas.
✔️ The Drawbacks: Important limitations and fees you need to know.
Who is this for?
Tourists and expats in Malaysia looking for a local payment solution.
Malaysians who want a secure, separate spending card not linked to their bank account.
Anyone who loves the TnG eWallet but wants the option to pay without scanning a QR code.
TOPICS:
Intro & My Love for Touch ‘n Go
What is the Touch ‘n Go Prepaid Visa Card?
The 3 Amazing Things This Card Can Do
How to Apply (Virtual & Physical Card)
Basic vs Travel Card & The “Numberless” Feature
Practical Benefits & Advantages
Important Limitations & Drawbacks
LIVE DEMO: ATM Cash Withdrawal
LIVE DEMO: Contactless Payment at 7-Eleven
How This Card Saved Me (True Story)
Final Thoughts & Who It’s For
Links & Resources:
https://www.touchngo.com.my/
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Touch ‘n Go. I’m just a user sharing my personal experience. Fees, features, and eligibility can change. Always check the official Touch ‘n Go website for the latest information.
Got questions or tips about the card? Share them in the comments below! Your insights could help others and might be featured in a follow-up video.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug. And today I want to talk about something that is very near and dear to my heart. Because if you scan some of the recent videos on my YouTube channel, you’ll probably figure out that I really love using e-wallets. I love the convenience of e-wallets. Particularly the Touch ‘n Go eWallet here in Malaysia. I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about money anymore. I don’t have to carry around cash. I don’t have to worry whether I have enough small change for my purchase. I just take out my phone, scan a QR code, and I’m done. I really love that. In fact, the only reason I even carry around a wallet anymore is because I also love the enhanced Touch ‘n Go card. This card is linked to my Touch ‘n Go eWallet and I use it to go into the MRT, into the monorail, ride the KTM train, Rapid KL buses, paying tolls on the highway, anything to do with transportation in Kuala Lumpur, particularly as I said, just scanning in and out of the MRT, never having to worry about buying a token, having money with you. I love this card and the only reason I even have a wallet anymore is because I need a place to put this card. Without that, I would probably just carry my phone with me and just leave my wallet at home. But today, I want to introduce you to the third major product in the Touch ‘n Go lineup, and that is the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. This card was introduced, I think, in 2023. And it took me a long time to become aware of it and in particular to find out that even I could apply for one and get one. What’s so amazing about this card? Well, that’s what I’m going to talk about and show you in this video.
First of all, what is it? It is a prepaid Visa card that is linked to your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. And there are three amazing things about this card. One, it can be used anywhere in the world on the global Visa network. Anywhere that Visa is accepted, you can use this card. You can pay for items in shops. You can pay for items and services online. You use this card and the money is deducted automatically from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet balance. That’s the key point to understand here. Before you can use this card, the money has to already be in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. But as soon as you have a balance in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet, you can use this card anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. Two, you can use it to withdraw cash from an ATM. And think about that for a minute. How many times have you seen people overseas and they just landed in a foreign country, they’re at the airport, wherever they are, they go to use their foreign bank card or foreign credit card, and it doesn’t work. This could easily happen to any of us. You’re in a foreign land on the far side of the planet and you have no money. But as long as you have money in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet, the prepaid Visa card can come to your rescue. You can use it in an ATM and withdraw cash directly from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. And three, this card supports contactless payments, Visa Paywave. You know how you see people going into stores and they just take out a card and they tap it and they go? Well, they’re not magicians. They’re doing something very ordinary. And with this card, you can do it, too. Technically, you’re still paying with your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. But when you use this card, you don’t actually have to go to all the trouble of scanning a QR code. You simply tap the card, payment goes through automatically, and it is deducted from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet.
How do you get one of these cards and who can get one? Well, I want to be a little bit careful in talking about this because I don’t have any insider knowledge. I’m not an expert in Touch ‘n Go. I don’t work for the company or anything like that. I’m just a regular foreign tourist here in Malaysia. And I was able to get one of these cards. So, my assumption is that if I can get one, then probably all foreign tourists can get one as well. Of course, to get one, you first have to have a Touch ‘n Go eWallet account. So, the first step is to download the Touch ‘n Go eWallet app to your phone. Open an account, add some money to your Touch ‘n Go eWallet balance, you top up your eWallet, and once you have a little bit of money in your eWallet balance, then on the homepage, you can see a little button labeled cards. Click on the card button and that will take you to a page where you apply for your prepaid Visa card. Now the really interesting thing about this card for me is that there are actually two versions. There is the digital virtual version. It lives only on your app and then there is the physical card. And if all you want is to be able to use this card for online purchases, you don’t even need to get the physical card. That’s just a choice. So, it’s actually kind of a two-step process. You click on that card button, fill out a very simple form, and as soon as that form is submitted and it’s approved by Touch ‘n Go, you have the prepaid Visa card already in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet app. It’s right there. It has the card number, the expiry date, and the CVV, and you can use it for making purchases online. But then once you have your virtual prepaid Visa card, it’s living there in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet app. If you want to and you have a use for it, then you can apply for the physical card. And one trick here is that Touch ‘n Go recently released a new version. So when you apply for your physical card, first of all, it has to be mailed to an address in Malaysia. So, you have to have some sort of an address you can use. In Malaysia, there is a small application fee. It could be 10 ringgit or 15 ringgit because there are now two versions of this card. The basic card is the one that I have here. It currently costs 10 ringgit or you can apply for the new travel card and that is 15 ringgit. And on the website, the Touch ‘n Go website, there is a chart. I’ll put it up on the screen here that lists all the differences between the basic and the travel card. I’m not going to go over all the differences. You can read them for yourself. And I imagine these details will change over time. So, you just have to go to the website, look for the chart, and then you can figure out for yourself, do you want the basic card, or would you like to get the new travel version? One special feature of this prepaid Visa card, the physical card, is that it is numberless. I mean, you do have a Visa number and an expiry date and a CVV, the three number code, but none of it is printed on the card itself. The only thing printed on the card is your name. And that of course is done for security reasons. So, if you lose the card, nobody has access to any of that information. In order to get the number, the expiry date and the CVV, you have to go to the Touch ‘n Go eWallet. And that information is hidden behind a couple of security layers. Plus, in the app itself, you can freeze the card. You can lock it and unlock it directly from the app.
Obviously, I’m pretty excited about this card, but what are the actual practical benefits? One is that it is a local card. Foreign cards can be declined by ATMs, declined for payment, but with a local card, chances are it’s going to be more easily accepted. So, you don’t run the risk of your card being declined. Another advantage to having this card, of course, is that you don’t have to worry about money as much. You don’t have to concern yourself as much with getting cash, carrying cash around with you, worrying about the cash, things like that. You’ve got your card. And with this card, your exposure is more limited. So, the only money at risk if you’re worried about that is the amount of money in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. It is not connected to your credit cards. It’s not connected to your bank account. This card is only connected to your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. So, you can control how much money you put into your eWallet. Then you use this to make payments and you don’t have to worry about security nearly as much. The only money that is exposed, as I said, is the money that you put in your eWallet. That’s it. Another advantage is it lessens QR code fatigue. Personally, I don’t suffer from that. I find using e-wallets, scanning QR codes, I just find that is very entertaining. It’s a lot of fun, but if you’re doing it all day long every day, maybe it starts to wear on you a little bit and you just don’t want to scan QR codes anymore. Particularly if you are going into shops like 7-Eleven, KK Mart, 99 Speed Mart. In those places, they have to scan your code. So, it’s a little bit of a longer process, right? You’re standing in line, you’ve got people behind you. Now you’ve got to open up your app. You’ve got to log in. Then you’ve got to navigate to the scanner. Navigate to the button where you show your code. Show it to them. Maybe you don’t have a good internet connection. It’s taking longer. And you’re apologizing. It’s like, “Oh, it’s loading. It’s loading. Look, it’s it’s it’s working.” And people behind you are like, “Come on, hurry up.” If that starts to get on your nerves, Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. Contactless. Tap and go and the payment still comes from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet, but you no longer have to worry about scanning QR codes. And I see that as a big big advantage. Finally, a really important advantage particularly for a traveler or like a tourist coming to Malaysia or a Malaysian going to another country on a holiday. You get to that country, your cards are being declined. You go to the ATM to get money, doesn’t work. Now you’re stuck. You’re in a foreign land and you have no money. What do you do? Well, with a Touch ‘n Go eWallet app, someone in Malaysia, a friend of yours, a family member, they can deposit money to your Touch ‘n Go eWallet and then wherever you are in the world, you can take your Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card and withdraw that money in cash from an ATM. So I think it can be very very useful in an emergency situation where you have no money at all. Friends and family can deposit money to your account and then you can have instant access to that money by withdrawing it from an ATM. Now you’ve got cash. Your life has been saved. Your vacation has been saved.
So, I guess I’m making this card sound pretty good and you’re going to rush out and get one. But you might be wondering, well, what are the drawbacks? There must be limitations. And of course, there are limitations. The most important one is even though it’s called Visa, it is a prepaid Visa card. It is not a credit card. So, you don’t have a line of credit. You can’t build up a bill over the month and pay it at the end of the month. You have to be very clear about that. It doesn’t have the same power of a credit card. Any money that you want to charge to this card, it already has to be in your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. It’s also not a bank account and it’s not completely fee free. There are fees involved. So, as I mentioned, just to get the card. It’s either a 10 currently, it’s a 10 or 15 ringgit fee to apply for the card. And when you use the card to withdraw money from an ATM, there is a fee for that. I don’t know exactly how much it is, and I’m not going to talk about that because I think the details will change over time. And it’s also the fee I think is more when you use it in other countries as opposed to making an ATM withdrawal in Malaysia. But there are fees involved. So it’s not completely fee free. Though basically what I’m saying is it is not a magic card that can do everything and it definitely doesn’t take the place of planning. You still have to plan ahead. You’re going to another country, you should have some emergency cash tucked away. You’ve got to have your credit card from your home country, your own debit cards. This is not going to replace any of that, but I can see so many situations where it can be very useful. So, it’s just another financial tool that can help you out, make your life easier, and occasionally maybe even get you out of a jam.
Time for a little physical demonstration. I’m going to use this prepaid Visa card to withdraw money from an ATM. I’m just out front of a Maybank here in Malaysia. It’s extremely busy. Every time I try to do anything, I always pick the absolute worst time. So, the lobby and there’s like a huge lineup in front of every ATM. But hey, I’m going to do it anyway. Oh, one thing I should mention is that when you get the Visa card in the mail, you have to activate it and as part you basically just scan a QR code with the app and that activates the card and you have to select a PIN and then you use the PIN when you come to an ATM. You choose your own PIN and you do that in the Touch ‘n Go eWallet app when you get the physical card in the mail. So, let’s go in and give it a try. So, as I pointed out, the card itself is numberless. So, no number is printed on the card. You only get your card number from inside the eWallet app. But, of course, for an ATM withdrawal, you don’t need your card number. You just put it into the ATM and enter your PIN.
And I believe you have to look for the Visa Plus symbol and then you know that it will work.
English.
So, I’ve entered my PIN. Withdrawal.
Continue. And this is interesting. You don’t select credit card because it is even though it’s a Visa, it is not credit.
And now just enter 50 ringgit.
And that’s the good side.
And there you go. It worked.
So there you go. 2 minutes ago I had no cash. Suddenly I have 50 ringgit and I withdrew that money from my Touch ‘n Go eWallet. Interestingly, while I was talking about how you’re I think you’re supposed to select savings account because technically this is not a credit card or a checking account. But while I was talking about that, it just skipped that screen. So, I guess it just went to the default account and I entered 50 ringgit. And so far, I have not seen any kind of a fee. But now I’m going to check my Touch ‘n Go eWallet app and look at the transaction history. Right away I can see that some money has disappeared. My account balance has been reduced. So here’s a button called transactions and I can go to my transactions page and right there ATM withdrawal 51.4 ringgit. So yeah, that matches what I read on the website. I withdrew 50 ringgit and they charged me 1.4 ringgit as a withdrawal fee. And as far as I understand it, that’s a flat fee. So if you withdrew 100 ringgit, 200, 500, whatever the amount is, there’s a flat fee of 1.4 ringgit per withdrawal. My ATM withdrawal at Maybank. That was very successful. Worked perfectly. So, I’m here at 7-Eleven and I’m going to demo using the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. Just using Visa Paywave, just tap and go. Going to get a cold drink and let’s see how this works out. I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of contactless payments, but I’ve learned that it’s this symbol that’s the key to the whole thing. Those curved lines, that’s the symbol you’re looking for. So, if you see that logo, that symbol, that means Visa Paywave will work. So, I have to find a terminal that has that symbol on it.
Here we go.
Okay. And there’s the symbol that I was talking about, the same curved lines. Hello.
So, I think I can use this card with this terminal. It doesn’t actually say anything on it. You just look for those curved lines.
Card. Yes.
You want it? No, it’s okay. Thank you. Thank you. So, there you are. That’s all it took. And you can get a receipt if you want. I just said no because I just got a liter of milk. That’s all I got. But you can look on your smartphone app afterwards. And then you can see the transaction on the Touch ‘n Go eWallet app.
So, let’s just check. I opened Touch ‘n Go. Click on transactions and right there 7-Eleven 10.9 ringgit for my cold and delicious liter of milk.
Personally, I have to say that the Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card really did help me out a lot. I was here in Malaysia and my actual Visa card, my credit card once again was hit with fraud. I don’t know what happened but there was suddenly fraud happening with my credit card and of course my bank in Canada as soon as they became aware of it cancelled the card. So now I personally was really stuck and I had all of these online bills that I needed to pay. And I was sitting here in Malaysia and I was getting all these emails saying, “Your account is overdue. We’re going to delete your account. We’re going to cancel your account. You have to pay right away.” And I had no way to pay any of them because I didn’t have a credit card anymore because I’m not in Canada. It was going to take weeks for the bank to issue a new card. At that time, there just happened to be a postal strike in Canada. So, even though Visa had mailed the new card to me, I didn’t get it for about 6 weeks because of the postal strike and I was really stuck and my entire online life was just going to collapse. And that’s when I discovered this card. I applied for a Touch ‘n Go prepaid Visa card. I got it and I could use that card online to cover all of these bills. So, it really saved my life. I put the money into my Touch ‘n Go eWallet and then I paid the bills online using my digital card. So, it really did save my life, which is, I mean, the main reason why I’m so excited about it.
So that’s it. I hope some of that information can help people out there, whether foreign visitors to Malaysia or Malaysians themselves. Maybe there are some Malaysians that aren’t even aware of this possibility. And I’m sure there are lots of people out there who know a lot more about it than I do. As I said, I’m just a typical tourist and all I can talk about is my own personal experiences. But if you have anything to add, information that can help other people out, put it down in the comments. And if there is a lot of new information there, a lot of tips and tricks and interesting factoids, I can include all of those comments perhaps in a second video replying to questions, adding a lot more information. So look out for that video in the future. So that’s it. Shutting down for now and I will see you as always in the next video.
This is going to be an interesting experience. I’m going to go into 7-Eleven, buy a cold drink, and then I’m going to try to pay for it simply by tapping my Touch ‘n Go Visa card. I looked in 7-Eleven earlier, and they have a terminal that has the curved circles that indicate like NFC technology, Paywave, tap and go, whatever you want to call it. So, my Touch ‘n Go Visa card has the same logo on it and it has a chip. So, in theory, it should work. And it’s going to be fascinating for me because I’ve never done it before. Like even with a regular credit card, like with a Visa credit card, I’ve never done Tap and Go, Paywave in a store for any purchase ever. So, this is going to be the first time in my life I’ve tried it. And it strikes me that it could be incredibly useful because I normally pay with my Touch ‘n Go eWallet and I find it incredibly efficient and fast. I love using it. But there are several steps where you have to open the Touch ‘n Go eWallet app, scan your thumbprint to open it. Then you have to tap on the scanner, then tap on the pay button, which calls up your QR code, and they scan your code. And then finally, the payment is taken from your Touch ‘n Go eWallet. So, there’s a lot of steps in there. It takes a few seconds, but if this works, I just tap and the payment is automatically deducted from my Touch ‘n Go eWallet on my phone. But I don’t actually have to use my phone to use Touch ‘n Go. So, that could be pretty amazing. Most things in my life when I try to do things like this, it doesn’t work. But yeah, I have very bad luck when it comes to technology, but you never know. Let’s go try it out.
And I’m going to try to use the Touch ‘n Go Paywave.
And it worked. Wow.
That is so exciting. Thank you very much.
There you go. Success. I’m not quite sure what they saw on the terminal when they did it, but I just had to I was like holding my card over the Paywave symbol on the scanner. I didn’t like just wave it through the air. I held it there and then while I was holding it, she pushed a button and then took a few seconds, but I think it’s just because I’m inexperienced. And then the payment went through 10.9 ringgit for my liter of milk. And it has a card number. On the receipt, it doesn’t say anything about Touch ‘n Go. It just says Visa, but the payment should have come from my eWallet. So, let’s take a look for that next. So, let’s open Touch ‘n Go. I have to use my fingerprint to open it. And we go to recent transactions.
And there it is right at the top. 7-Eleven 10.9 ringgit. Amazing. So that worked really well with my Touch ‘n Go Visa card, which is connected with my Touch ‘n Go eWallet. So, I can continue to use Touch ‘n Go in 7-Eleven stores, but I don’t even have to get out my phone anymore. I just need to keep this in my wallet and then pay automatically. And the money is deducted from my Touch ‘n Go account on my phone. Amazing.