Merchantrade's initiative with CLAB to attract larger foreign worker participation

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 17  -- Merchantrade Asia Sdn Bhd, which has forged an alliance with Construction Industry Development Board's subsidiary Construction Labour Exchange Centre Bhd (CLAB) to serve the unbanked community, is projecting a doubling of foreign workers under the initiative by early next year.

 To-date, this initiative has roped in some 2,000 foreign workers and the number is expected to increase to 4,000 by the first quarter of 2021, the digital money services business operator and e-money issuer said in a statement. 

Through this collaboration which started in August 2019, CLAB would 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 and in meeting the aim of the financial flows of the unbanked workers.

CLAB is responsible for bringing and redistributing of foreign workers catering to the needs of organisations and companies in the construction industries.

Merchantrade Asia managing director Ramasamy K. Veeran, said the collaboration was 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 their money to their families back at 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 cash,” he added.

CLAB chief executive officer Abdul Rafik Abdul Rajis said that with over 165 registered companies, CLAB had met the objective of promoting the facilitation of cashless wages by roping workers in the unbanked segment through this collaboration.

This was achieved with the support from the Home Ministry and Human Resource Ministry.

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

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 different languages including English, Malay, Nepali, Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese and Burmese and many more directly from the Merchantrade mobile wallet app.

“Merchantrade Money currently holds e-wallet size of up to RM20,000 catering to the needs of everyone to transact digitally, providing convenience in their daily lives”, said Ramasamy.

-- BERNAMA