Merchantrade Asia partners Construction Labour Exchange Centre to reach unbanked workers in construction sector

• Salary paid into Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid Card of workers
• Timely move in face of Covid-19 restrictions, reduces risk of robbery

Merchantrade Asia Sdn Bhd (Merchantrade Asia) and the Construction Labour Exchange Centre Bhd (CLAB) have forged an alliance to serve the unbanked community, comprising both foreign workers and Malaysians in the construction industry.

Through this collaboration, CLAB will facilitate contractors to pay salaries via top-up direct into Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid Card, which is in line with the government’s initiatives in promoting cashless wages for unbanked workers.

Merchantrade Asia is Malaysia’s leader in digital money services business and an e-money issuer with 92 branches and more than 400 agent locations whilst Kuala Lumpur based CLAB is responsible for bringing and redistributing foreign workers catering to the needs of organisations and companies in the construction industries.

Merchantrade Asia’s Managing Director Ramasamy K Veeran (pic, above), explains that the collaboration, which started in August 2019, is aimed at providing digital salary payments especially to foreign workers in the construction industry.

“By having their salaries credited into the Merchantrade Money Visa card, foreign workers can send money to their families back in their home countries digitally on their mobile devices, hence eliminating the need for contractors to pay salaries in cash.

“This is especially critical now, as the Covid-19 pandemic has restricted the movement of foreign workers to cash out their wages and make payments in addition to mitigating several other risks such as theft and robbery of their cash,” he adds.

To date, this initiative with CLAB has roped in some 2,000 foreign workers and is expected to increase to 4,000 by the first quarter of 2021.

“With over 165 registered companies, coupled with the support from the Home Ministry and Human Resource Ministry to promote the facilitation of cashless wages, CLAB is roping workers from the unbanked segment through this collaboration,” says Abdul Rafik Abdul Rajis, CLAB’s Chief Executive Officer.

“CLAB is able to monitor salary transactions, location of workers as well as Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) deductions for foreign workers registered,” he adds.

Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid card also offers a variety of other services and benefits such as remittances, mobile reloads, online purchases, personal accident insurance coverage with basic plan as low as for RM5 per month, multi lingual application and customer services with eight languages including English, Malay, Nepali, Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese and Burmese and many more directly from the Merchantrade mobile wallet app.

Merchantrade Money holds an e-wallet size of up to US$4,870 (RM20,000).