The Razer Pay e-wallet and Razer card were interrupted in Malaysia and Singapore, and these services will cease after September 30, 2021.
All Razer Pay e-wallet features will also be discontinued after August 31, 2021, so users can no longer top up, pay, or transfer, and the app will be unavailable from October 1, 2021. Razer Pay had Beta version 3 years in Malaysia since its launch in July 2018 with the label “e-wallet for youth and millennials”.
But as we now know, this did not quite work out with the target group of Malaysians, especially with the Red Sea competitors in the e-wallet they encountered here. We looked at 5 possible factors why she unplugged her stay here.
1. An e-wallet in the lifestyle category that has not met enough needs
For starters, there are many species e-wallets in Malaysia, and Razer Pay falls into the e-wallet lifestyle category, which is probably the largest category. There he faced strong competitors such as Boost, GrabPay and Touch ‘n Go eWallet, to name just a few.
But compared to them, it lacked the features that helped it stand out in the category. With the big 3, you can find additional features like investing, insurance contracts, home services, travel, parking payments and more.
Razer Pay had ambitions to provide similar experiences, of course. When is the first time launched, had joint plans to include more partners from the health and tourism sectors on its list of retailers. Unfortunately, the decision to remove it from the competition came before that plan was realized.
GrabPay, Boost and Touch ‘n Go eWallet were all launched sometime between 2017 and 2018, around the same time as the launch of the Razer Pay, but apparently the latter lagged behind due to differences in development and the development of others.
2. Promotions offered in less popular use categories
As of the third quarter of 2020, the most popular use of e-wallets among Malaysians is F&B, which stands on 24% majority among other categories of use such as groceries, shops, food delivery, bill payments, etc. It is reasonable to assume that it was the dominant category from the beginning.
Still, Razer Pay was out of focus. Instead there were his promotions and refunds gear according to bill payments, gaming equipment, and mostly for stores like 7-Eleven. This meant that with so many other more versatile e-wallets to choose from, there was little incentive to download and use Razer Pay just for these offers.
3. Other e-wallets offered better deals from the same merchants
While Razer Pay has partnered with some big brands like 7-Eleven, Tealive, Starbucks, 99 Speedmart, Secret Recipe, etc., other e-wallets have not missed partnerships with them either. It remains an extremely competitive environment.
But despite these partnerships, Razer Pay has failed to highlight its promotions. Other e-wallets had more attractive offers with these partners.
For example, Razer Pay offered an 8-10% discount for 7-Eleven and Starbucks earlier this year. However, the Touch ’n Go eWallet now offers a 20% refund or a random refund of RM 500 for selected recipients for 7-Eleven, and GrabPay occasionally has a 30-50% discount for various food delivery retailers, including Starbucks. In addition, Starbucks has even bigger discounts on various items on its GrabFood retailer page.
4. I didn’t make good enough use of the e-commerce trend
In addition, many Razer Paya merchants were offline stores with weaker e-commerce efforts. This was not the best move, given the pandemic and the rise of e-commerce later.
As an example of an e-wallet that has made good use of changing trends, we can look at the Touch ‘n Go eWallet, which has many promotions for Zalora and Lazada. Taking advantage of platforms that people are already actively using is a move that is strategic and makes sense.
5. His e-wallet niche was unsustainable
Every popular e-wallet has an area it specializes in to stand out in a saturated market — GrabPay with food delivery, Touch ‘n Go eWallet for toll surcharge and parking) etc.
On the other hand, not only did Razer Pay have a mediocre lifestyle offering, but it also stood out as an easy way to pay for game-related purchases. It is therefore likely that hardcore gamers were some of its first adopters.
The downside to this is that even players don’t buy every day, and that’s too much of a target market niche that an e-wallet can sustainably rely on.
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We are not talking about e-wallets to have have all the above features to be considered an e-wallet for lifestyle. But if the e-wallet is trying to position itself, it would be better to be better than its competitors.
Users have a limited range of attention and (sometimes) limited space on their devices – they will only decide to keep the most useful choices.
Finally, Razer Pay did not have the advantage of being first or best, but was too slow to catch up with the competition and did not properly encourage adoption.
One of the ways Razer Pay tried to force adoption was his support campaign for local SME traders during a pandemic. If new or existing customers were buying through Razer Pay, they were given a free surgical mask daily or monthly.
It was an unattractive deal compared to the refunds, discounts and free shipping that other e-wallets offered in their SME support campaigns. On top of that, Razer Pay’s campaign lasted only a while with no new ones announced, while GrabPay and Boost regularly updated their incentives to encourage adoption and encourage customers to buy from SMEs.
However, Razer Fintech still has a strong hand, access to payment Razer Trading Services (RMS). 2020 generated $ 4.3 billion in total payments (TPV), an 104.4% increase over the previous year, signaling potential in their fintech ventures even if Razer Pay and Card didn’t turn out as planned.
So far, Razer has said that will be the case focusing more on your B2B business (which includes RMS). On top of that, Razer Fintech wants to expand its Razer Youth Bank in Malaysia. Lee Meng, Razer’s chief strategic officer, revealed that Malaysia’s large demographic population of over 6 million young people is attractive, and believes that “the demographic segment of young people and millennials is among the most dissatisfied in Malaysia.”
Editor’s note: Parts of this article have been amended to reflect the greater accuracy of the statements.
- You can read more articles about Razer that we have written here.
Featured image: Min Liang Tan, founder of Razer
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