Stripe has officially arrived in Malaysia and they are enabling businesses to accept online payments quickly with no upfront cost and hidden fees. At today’s event, they have also announced a partnership with PayNet which will enable businesses to accept online banking payments via FPX.
According to Stripe, Malaysia is its second market in Southeast Asia that has a high mobile penetration of 88%. However, the internet only represents 3% of the country’s GDP.
Stripe’s co-founder and president, John Collision has shared that less than 8% of commerce is online and this is largely because moving money on the internet remains complicated, cumbersome and slow. Stripe aims to remove traditional barriers and to build an infrastructure that ambitious businesses need to run at internet speed and scale.
Stripe has been testing its service in Malaysia since January this year and they are currently integrated on several online-based platforms such as EasyStore, DahMakan, Fashion Valet, Flower Chimp, Grab and SOCAR. During the trial period, the company has taken the effort to localise its platform.
Since this is a heavily regulated space, they worked closely with the government to ensure that everything is set up well and to ensure its “Know Your Customer” checks are suitable for the Malaysian market. To make it easy for merchants to accept payments from customers, they have worked closely with PayNet which enables them to accept payment from major banks in Malaysia.
Stripe aims to provide a better FPX experience with clearer bank statements, easy refunds and with a system that prevents accidental double-charges. There’s also an offline bank indicator so that consumers will know if their preferred bank is offline for maintenance.
With Stripe, businesses can receive payments from over 135 countries and any merchant can register online with no complicated paperwork in less than 10 minutes. Apart from payments, the platform also offers businesses a full stack of tools and 3rd party services from invoicing, email marketing and customer relationship management.
To prevent fraud, there’s also the optional Radar service that uses machine learning to protect businesses from fraudulent transactions. According to them, they block US$ 500 million in fraudulent payments each month.
Stripe does not charge any setup or fixed monthly fees, and they charge a standard price of 3.4% + RM2.00 per successful card charge. If you don’t receive any orders, you won’t have to pay for anything. Customised packages are also available and businesses can also enjoy volume discounts.
The platform does offer a point of sale solution in the US but it isn’t available yet for Malaysia. For more information, you can visit Stripe’s website.
