payments. for the first time in malaysia and likely in the region, banks and non - banks will be connected on a single payment network. this is a good example of a strategy of collaborative competition, or ‘ co - opetition. payment providers collaborate at the infrastructure level via the shared payment infrastructure and compete on the service level. this expands network reach, lowers costs and avoids duplication of resources by the industry. it also focuses competition at the product level. looking ahead, we envisage industry players to develop more innovative value - added features to provide better service levels to consumers and merchants. another important area where innovation plays a prominent role, is to advance financial inclusion through digitalisation. out of the malaysian adult population of 24 million, we estimate that about 10 million do not use online banking, while 2 million remain unbanked. we look to the industry, both banks and non - banks, to come up with new and imaginative ways to accelerate the onboarding of these underbanked and unbanked segments of our society. in supporting this, the transaction fee for instant transfer transactions up to rm5, 000 will be waived effective 1 july 2018 for individuals and smes. strategies beyond monetary incentives also need to be employed. for example, mobile payment applications should be convenient, fast, secure, simple and intuitive. with so many things competing for our attention these days, the design of customer experience is critical. delivering a superior customer experience is a major source of competitive advantage. intensifying public engagement and consumer protection our migration to e - payments would not be successful without intense public engagement and consumer protection efforts. firstly, much more needs to be done to promote debit card usage. the bank has taken the lead by lowering the costs of debit card acceptance through the payment card reform framework ( pcrf ) in 2015. consequently, malaysia ’ s debit card interchange fee rates are now among the lowest. they are up to 10 times lower than the rates in other regional economies. the industry should take advantage of this. we need to educate merchants on the availability of a lower cost debit card network. to move this forward, paynet will drive an industry wide awareness campaign. merchants who cannot afford the cost of accepting the more expensive 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches credit card should opt to accept only debit cards. this would lessen the incentives for merchants to impose surcharges to recover their payment card acceptance cost which would ultimately benefit the consumer. secondly

– policy actions given the dispersion of sources, the need for the integration of credit markets raises questions on how to measure over - indebtedness and assess household creditworthiness in similar ways. this will improve micro and macro financial surveillance and enable a more comprehensive assessment of financial stability risks. in effect, this calls for a harmonized system of measuring credit data in the eu. nevertheless, regulatory and institutional experience vary amongst eu member states, as national credit registries do not exist in certain member - states, while various interests in the credit industry have dictated how the data centralization systems would be set up ( i. e. credit bureaus, credit reference agencies, public credit registers etc ). the good news is that the european central bank has made significant steps for the setting - up of a centralized infrastructure for the collection and sharing of granular credit - risk data within the banking sector on a eu - wide scale, called “ analytical credit dataset ” ( ‘ anacredit ’ ). anacredit will impose new reporting requirements for lenders and credit bureaus in the euro area, which will enable the harmonization of credit data that credit bureaus have in their databases. in this vein, all stakeholders ( credit bureaus, lenders, borrowers, consumers ) may be obliged to use the same set of indicators and harmonized definitions which, eventually, will allow for a paneuropean comparison of the levels of indebtedness levels. having said that, our problems will not disappear automatically with an integrated pan - european database. the relevant supervisory activities should be enhanced in order to ensure that credit bureaus implement best practices in data collection processing and submission. supervisors should ensure that appropriate procedures are in place so that the rights of customers can be protected, while the protection of security and confidentiality of data should remain high on the agenda. best practices indicate that credit reporting systems should benefit from a legal and regulatory framework that is transparent, predictable, proportionate and supportive of consumer rights. the legal and regulatory framework should allow more than one credit bureau license in order to avoid the creation of a monopoly. credit bureaus should be allowed to operate under an institutional framework that could regulate its specific activities, including the receipt and processing of consumer information, its database updates, as well as the means for compiling information and assessing consumers ’ creditworthiness. since the level of information is expected to be harmonized, private credit bureaus that have obtained a license could then compete on