For a beneficiary who has an account within the same bank with the payer, which is known as Intrabank, the funds will be credited instantaneously. The program for today includes the showing of three video clips on online banking and IBG, which can be downloaded through YouTube and ABM and AIBIM’s website, including presentations by two banks. In addition, 17 banks and MyClear (the national payment system operator) have also set up exhibition booths to showcase their respective electronic payments and funds transfer solutions. This is indeed an opportunity not to be missed as you will be able to learn and ask questions about online banking solutions and sign up for the special offers such as free security tokens or waiver of monthly subscription fee for business Internet banking as provided by some of the exhibitors today. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  In conjunction with today’s roadshow, I am pleased to announce that 2 banks namely, Bank Simpanan Nasional and OCBC Bank, together with 8 banks in Temerloh1 in Kuantan will hold their “Open Day” from today, 2 December until this Friday, 6 December. During the weeklong “Open Day”, visitors can enquire and learn more about e-payment solutions from the branch staff. The “Open Day” event is open to all businesses and the general public to complement the efforts of the roadshow to reach out to smaller towns and I encourage all participants to take this opportunity to visit the bank branches in Kuantan and Temerloh.
Based on the “Open Day” events held in 8 towns in 4 states for the past 2 months, more than 900 (911) banks’ customers have signed up to use the online banking services. For information of all participants, to date, cheques are still widely used in our country. Based on the last 3 years data, an average of 205 million cheques amounting to about RM2 trillion are issued on an annual basis. In terms of the number of cheques over the country’s population, or cheques per capita, it is at 7.1. This figure is much higher than 3.9 in advanced countries such as Norway, Finland and Australia. It is also worth noting that 92% (or 18.4 million) of the total adult population in Malaysia have banking accounts and of these, about 74% (13.7 million) of bank account holders have Internet banking accounts. However, although 74% of the bank account holders have Internet banking access, only 43% (5.9 million) of the Internet banking subscribers are active users in conducting financial transactions. In this regard, we have not reached a stage where the masses are familiar or have gained sufficient trust in using Internet banking to conduct their financial transactions. It is through educational programs such as this roadshow event that we hope the businesses will take the opportunity to learn more about the security safeguards and safe practices to gain sufficient confidence to adopt online banking and conduct e-payments.