U Mobile GoPayz e-wallet with virtual and/or physical prepaid cards

GoPayz is a challenger e-wallet operated by U Mobile Services. It is a second e-wallet in Malaysia after AirAsia BigPay that issues physical prepaid card to its users. It is the third of its kind in Malaysia that issues virtual prepaid card, after BigPay (Mastercard) and Boost (UnionPay).

In fact, GoPayz has gone one step ahead of BigPay, which only issue virtual and physical prepaid Mastercard to their users. GoPayz accounts by default have 3 virtual prepaid cards, namely UnionPay, Mastercard and Visa.

On top of that, its users have the option to also carry physical prepaid card(s) with a one time card issuance fee of RM16 per card. There is no annual fee nor yearly SST to keep the GoPayz physical card.

Unlike BigPay which  has a large stored-value capacity of up to RM10,000, this GoPayz e-wallet only has a capacity of RM5,000 for its Premium Wallet Accounts (RM200 for Basic Wallet Accounts). The capacity limit is shared among all the UnionPay, Mastercard and Visa prepaid cards.

With a physical card on hand, you can use GoPayz to pay to merchants that accept UnionPay/Mastercard/Visa at their outlets. Another advantage is that you can withdraw cash from your e-wallet at local banks ATM machine, with a very low cash withdrawal fee of RM1.00 only. You can also withdraw from overseas ATM machine, with the cash withdrawal fee of RM10.00. This rate is in fact cheaper than rival BigPay Mastercard.

Beside being yet another e-wallet just like the others in the market, GoPayz seems to have ambition to disrupt the traditional financial services, including the insurance market, unit trust market, and even foreign currency exchange market.

GoPayz introduces self-service financial services for its users to buy insurance and/or unit trust at a very affordable rate, by eliminating the agent commission and reducing the administrative expenses involved. It works together with licensed life insurance company Sun Life, general insurance company Chubb, and online unit trust company FundSupermart Malaysia to come out with its financial services products.

Should their self-service financial services business model be successful, it will affect the insurance agents and unit trust agents who make their living through sales commission. We can foresee that the sales commission rate might be significantly reduced in order to compete with market disruptors such as GoPayz financial services.