Why Malaysian Digital Banks Built For The Wrong User
The Setup
Before COVID — nobody was excited about eWallets.
The mamak still ran on cash. The pasar malam still ran on cash. Your mak still ran on cash.
The government tried. RM30 eTunai Rakyat. Download an app. Claim your money. Spend it.
Seven million Malaysians participated. Not because they wanted to go digital.
Because it was free money.oney.
Then COVID hit. MCO. No physical contact. QR payments became the safe option overnight.
Then ePenjana. RM50 more. Download. Claim. Spend.
Then eBelia. Another RM50. This time targeting youth specifically.
The numbers looked extraordinary.
Millions of Malaysians downloading eWallets. Transaction volumes climbing. QR payments normalised at the mamak, the grocery store, the pasar malam.
To anyone reading the data — Malaysia was going digital. Fast. Enthusiastically. Irreversibly.
The Wrong Conclusion
So when Bank Negara awarded five digital banking licenses in 2022, the confidence was understandable.
The eWallet data said Malaysians were ready.
Digital banks launched. Products were built. Be U — Bank Islam’s youth-focused app — was already in market, positioned to capture exactly the demographic the data pointed to.
The assumption was logical:
The same Malaysians who adopted Touch n Go and GrabPay will naturally migrate to digital banking.
It was also wrong.
What The Data Actually Showed
Three things drove the eWallet adoption numbers. None of them were organic behavioural change.
Free money. RM30. RM50. RM50 again. People downloaded eWallets to claim government credit. Not because they wanted to change how they related to money.
COVID necessity. Contactless payment wasn’t a preference during MCO. It was the safe option. Remove the pandemic — remove the urgency.
Youth targeting. eBelia specifically targeted 18 to 20 year olds. The most digitally comfortable demographic. Not representative of the broader Malaysian banking population.
When the free money stopped — and the pandemic ended — the behaviour that looked like digital readiness revealed itself as something far more conditional.
Not readiness. Convenience under specific circumstances.
The User They Missed
Underneath the adoption numbers — the real Malaysian bank user was still there.
The legacy user. The one whose financial identity was built on physical branches, passbooks, and the discipline of saving. The one who used Touch n Go for convenience at the toll — not because they wanted to rethink their relationship with money.
Digital banking asked something completely different from that user:
Trust us with your savings. Change how you think about money. Shift your entire financial life to a platform you’ve never touched before.
That’s not a QR scan at the mamak. That’s a behavioural transformation.
And the data never measured whether Malaysians were ready for that.
It only measured whether they would download an app for RM30.
What Happened Next
Be U shuts down. July 31 2026. All users migrated back to BIMB Mobile.
Four out of five digital banks lose senior leadership within two years of launching.
The incubation produced patients that couldn’t survive outside the incubator.
Not because the products were bad.
Because the hypothesis was wrong from the start.
The Sampling Error
In research — a sampling error happens when the group you measured doesn’t actually represent the population you’re building for.
Malaysia’s digital bank strategy was built on eWallet adoption data from a pandemic — where the government was paying people to download apps and physical cash was dangerous.
That sample did not represent the Malaysian bank user’s readiness to change their financial behaviour.
It represented their willingness to claim free money during a crisis.
Those are two completely different things.
And nobody asked the difference clearly enough before the licenses were awarded and the products were built.
Clarity is the most underrated business investment. Briefings on human experience, UX, and business psychology — drawn from 30 years across airlines, banking, design, and the field.
— Lokman S.