Rebecca PY MALAYSIA, 31 JULY 2026 – Merchantrade Asia Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian incorporated and licensed Money Services Business Provider and e-Money Issuer headquartered in Petaling Jaya, has officially activated Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet support for its Merchantrade Money Visa Prepaid cardholders nationwide.
The milestone makes Merchantrade Money the first homegrown non-bank e-money issuer in Malaysia to enable dual native NFC phone-tap payments. The move marks a significant upgrade for the company’s growing travel and local spend segments, with its multi-currency Visa prepaid cards now digitized directly into smartphone wallets. This delivers a seamless, card-not-present experience accepted at more than 100 million Visa touchpoints globally.
For travellers in particular, native NFC phone taps offer a combination of speed, safety, and convenience, allowing physical cards to stay safely tucked away in crowded tourist areas. While navigating overseas or on international roaming, phone taps succeed where QR codes sometimes struggle. Transactions clear in under a second at transit gates such as the London Underground and Singapore’s MRT, as well as in quick convenience store queues. Every tap draws directly from the user’s pre-converted multi-currency wallet, ensuring zero foreign transaction fee markups.
Cindy Loo, Executive Vice President for Merchantrade Money, said the launch reflects the company’s efforts to listen to customer feedback and remove friction at checkout. She noted that customers are already comfortable using their smartphones as their primary payment tool, and that enabling native NFC payments in Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet was a natural evolution toward a uniform, cardless experience at physical card terminals. According to Loo, the update removes the hassle of searching for a card or fumbling with a phone, whether cardholders are tapping at a local store in Klang or making payments overseas.
Built for enterprise-grade security and speed, the native NFC capabilities on Merchantrade Money are powered by the Visa Token Service, which replaces sensitive card details with secure tokens so that they are never exposed during payments. Samsung Wallet additionally provides Knox-level hardware protection for physical taps and wearables, while Google Wallet offers checkout flexibility across mobile apps and web platforms.
Merchantrade Money users can now link their cards within minutes using the In-App Provisioning feature inside the Merchantrade Money app, or by binding their card directly through the Google Wallet or Samsung Wallet interfaces.