MALAYSIA BILL PAYMENT MARKET, 2010-2019

The bill payment market in Malaysia consists of the payments made to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, telephone and several others. The bill payment market reached USD ~ million in 2014 registering a CAGR of 17.3% over 2010-2014. The bill payment market in Malaysia is constituted of 3 major bill payments namely: utility bills, telephone bills and satellite TV bills. The utility bill payments include the charges for basic utilities including electricity, gas and water bills. Utilities are the payment which every household in Malaysia makes as it includes the charges for basic necessities of life. This is one of the main reasons explaining the contribution of utilities in the bill payment market in Malaysia which is at a staggering figure of ~%.

The rising prices of 2 utilities i.e. gas and electricity in Malaysia owing to the government’s policies of abolishing subsidies on utilities has also resulted in the higher contribution to the overall bill payment market in Malaysia. The rising costs are leading to increased bill payments by a customer which is causing the bill payment market to increase in the country. There are 2 broad modes of paying the bill in Malaysia namely direct payments to the company offering the service for which the bill is being paid and secondly via a third party such as banks, ATMs, mobile banking among others. Direct payments take a huge chunk of the bill payment market with ~% of the total bill payments being paid at the official company payment channels offering the service either in cash or cheque. The third party payments are usually done via banks, ATMs, 7/11 Stores and mobile banking.