muhammad bin ibrahim : the dawn of a new era in malaysia's payment systems keynote address by mr muhammad bin ibrahim, governor of the central bank of malaysia ( bank negara malaysia ), at the malaysian e - payments excellence awards, kuala lumpur, 22 may 2017. * * * i am glad to be with you at this 2nd malaysian e - payments excellence awards organised by myclear. this evening, we are recognising the contributions of the financial industry, businesses and government agencies to the country ’ s e - payment agenda. the achievements showcased by the award winners today reflect the broader innovations and involvement that we continue to witness in the payment space to make e - payments more convenient, cost - efficient and safe for users. i am encouraged that contactless payments, for example, are gaining greater appeal for smaller value payments. equally important have been the collective efforts made to educate and inform users. this helps to drive changes in payment habits away from cash and cheques to epayments. malaysians are increasingly embracing e - payments malaysia has long recognised the importance of e - payments as a key enabler to drive national efficiency and competitiveness, and as a catalyst to facilitate the creation of new sources of growth. promising progress has been made in achieving the country ’ s e - payment targets. in a period of 6 years between 2011 and 2016, the number of e - payments per capita has almost doubled from 49 to 97 transactions per capita. this largely reflects the accelerated adoption of electronic fund transfers to displace cheques. cheque usage declined by 35 % from over 200 million cheques in 2011 to 133 million in 2016. over the same period, interbank giro ( ibg ) and instant transfers ( ibft ) grew almost four fold from 66 million transactions in 2011 to 257 million transactions in 2016. encouraging progress has also been achieved in efforts to displace cash. reform measures implemented since 2015 have made the acceptance of payment cards more affordable to merchants. we estimate the annual cost savings to merchants to be about rm168 million in 2016. this in turn has encouraged an increase in the number of payment card acceptance devices ( or pos terminals ) which expanded by 40 % to 323k terminals in 2016. we expect these developments to further expand the usage of debit cards to displace cash together with the enhancements to the payment card infrastructure to support pin and contactless technology. a new era in payments for many years, bank negara malaysia has taken the

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