Summary
- RHB Pay connects merchants directly to DuitNow, FPX, Visa and Mastercard without relying on additional payment intermediaries.
- Eligible transactions can receive real-time or next-day settlement, potentially helping businesses access sales revenue faster.
- Malaysians made an average of 538 e-payments per person in 2025, up 25% from 432 in 2024.
RHB Banking Group has officially launched RHB Pay, which it describes as Malaysia’s first bank-owned integrated payment gateway, putting the bank in more direct competition for a part of the digital payments market traditionally served by payment gateway and fintech providers.
For Malaysian businesses, the more interesting part is not simply that another payment gateway has entered the market.
It is that a major bank now wants to control more of the journey between customer checkout, payment processing, settlement and business banking.
The Data / News Breakdown
RHB Pay was officially unveiled on 5 August 2026 during the RHB Progress Series in Kuala Lumpur. The launch involved representatives from RHB, Payments Network Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia.
The platform brings several payment functions under one integration:
- Multiple Payment Methods: Merchants can accept FPX, DuitNow Pay and debit or credit cards through a single integration.
- Real-Time Settlements: RHB offers real-time or next-day settlement depending on the payment method used.
- Automatic Reconciliation: Payments can be matched through the merchant portal, alongside settlement reports and transaction tracking.
- Direct Payment Connections: RHB says the gateway directly connects with DuitNow, FPX, Visa and Mastercard without payment intermediaries in between.
Malaysia’s national payments network processed 8.44 billion digital transactions in 2025, with an additional 6.3 million transactions taking place each day on average compared with 2024. Bank transaction volumes increased 30.69%, while transactions involving non-bank participants jumped 71.7%.
Bank Negara Malaysia separately reported that the average Malaysian made 538 e-payment transactions in 2025, compared with 432 in 2024.
What This Means for the Bottom Line
1. Banks Want More of the Payment Gateway Business
For years, the payment process for many online businesses has looked something like this:
- Customer pays,
- Payment gateway processes the transaction
- Payment infrastructure moves the funds
- Merchant receives money in its bank account.
RHB Pay shortens parts of that chain by putting the acquiring bank, settlement relationship and payment gateway within the same broader banking ecosystem.
RHB specifically highlights its direct connections to DuitNow, FPX, Visa and Mastercard, as well as what it calls bank-direct pricing without additional third-party margins.
2. Faster Settlement Is Really a Cash Flow Story
Payment gateways are often discussed in terms of checkout experience, supported payment methods and transaction fees.
For smaller businesses, settlement speed can matter just as much.
Imagine a retailer generating RM100,000 in online sales each week. If the money from those transactions takes several days to reach the business account, part of its working capital is effectively sitting between the customer and merchant.
That matters when the company still has to pay suppliers, salaries, logistics providers and marketing expenses.
Faster settlement does not increase revenue, but it can reduce the gap between making a sale and having usable cash.
3. The Payment Gateway Is Becoming a Business Operations Tool
Businesses no longer only need a tool that answers one question: Did the customer pay?
They increasingly need to know when the money settles, which transaction belongs to which order, whether a payment failed and whether their accounting records match the payment platform.
RHB Pay includes a real-time merchant dashboard, automatic payment reconciliation, settlement reporting, transaction status tracking and configurable reports.
That puts payment gateways closer to the finance and accounting side of a business rather than treating them purely as checkout technology.
Why Malaysia’s Payment Gateway Market Is Becoming More Valuable
Malaysia already has a large digital payment base, much larger than most assume.
PayNet processed 8.44 billion transactions during 2025, while bank and non-bank transaction volumes both recorded strong double-digit growth.
At the merchant level, the infrastructure has expanded just as quickly.
Bank Negara reported 2.6 million registered DuitNow QR acceptance points at the end of 2024, up from two million a year earlier. Person-to-merchant DuitNow QR transactions more than doubled from 360 million to 870 million, reaching RM31.1 billion in value.
By late 2025, the number of Malaysian merchant touchpoints capable of accepting DuitNow QR had increased further to around 2.9 million.
As more transactions move digitally, whoever controls the merchant relationship gains access to something valuable: recurring transaction flows.
That helps explain why banks, fintech companies, e-wallet providers and payment gateway operators are increasingly competing over the same merchants.
RHB Pay makes that competition a little more interesting.
Rather than leaving payment gateways largely to specialist providers, one of Malaysia’s largest banking groups is now placing its own infrastructure directly at checkout, and that changes everything.
