Last week, Touch ‘n Go (TNG) eWallet rolled out a Bonus Return campaign under its GO+ investment feature, which lets you earn an extra 4% p.a. bonus rate on top of the daily return rate. Ongoing until 31 January 2022, all you need to do is maintain a minimum of RM200 balance in your GO+ account throughout the campaign period, with no requirement to deposit fresh funds to participate in the campaign either.

In this article, we’ll dive a little deeper into how the bonus rate makes this even better than the best high-interest savings accounts in Malaysia – though with some small caveats.

How much can you earn from this GO+ campaign?

Diving straight into the heart of the matter, let us share some quick scenarios and calculations to show you how you can benefit from this TNG eWallet GO+ campaign.

Under the best case scenario, where you are able to park RM9,500 into your GO+ account (the maximum holding amount), you’re guaranteed to earn a daily bonus rate of RM1.04 via the additional 4% p.a. and the prevailing daily return rate, which is projected at 1.47% p.a., thereby earning you approximately another RM0.38 per day. This means you can potentially earn about RM1.42 every day at 5.47% p.a.. This, in turn, translates to earnings of approximately RM130.64 if you take full advantage of the campaign from the first to the last day (92 days in total, without daily compounding of the profit).

As a comparison, if you decide to place RM5,000 instead, the 4% p.a. bonus rate will earn you approximately RM0.75 per day, inclusive of the projected daily rate. And let’s not forget the effect of daily compounding on the profit as well, which means that you will earn not only RM69 in interest from the whole 92 days (RM0.75 x 92 days), but approximately RM69.41 instead.

Meanwhile, if you allocate just the minimum RM200 to participate in this campaign, you’ll earn a daily bonus rate of approximately RM0.02 via the extra 4% p.a., and a daily return rate of about RM0.008 via the projected 1.47% p.a.. Essentially, this means you may be able to earn an approximate total of about RM2.58 by participating during the whole campaign period (92 days) – excluding the compounding effect on the profit. If you were to take into account the daily compounding effect, you may be able to earn another few more sen.

Here’s a table to quickly summarise the calculations for you:

Amount in TNG eWallet GO+ account	Estimated daily earning via 4% p.a. bonus rate	Estimated daily earning via projected 1.47% p.a. return rate	Estimated total earnings from whole campaign (92 days)
RM9,500	RM9,500 x 4%/365 days = RM1.04	RM9,500 x 1.47%/365 days = RM0.38	RM130.64
RM5,000	RM5,000 x 4%/365 days = RM0.55	RM5,000 x 1.47%/365 days = RM0.20	RM69.41 (with daily compounding effect)
RM200	RM200 x 4%/365 days = RM0.02	RM200 x 1.47%/365 days = RM0.008	RM2.78 (with daily compounding effect)

How does it compare to other savings instruments?

Based on its estimated yields alone, this campaign makes GO+ head and shoulders above other low-risk alternatives in the market currently.

To illustrate, regular savings accounts typically offer interest/profit rates that range only between a low 0.25% to 2.25%. Even high-interest savings accounts fall noticeably short of TNG GO+’s 5.47% p.a. rate. What’s more, the current GO+ yields don’t require you to do anything beyond cashing in your funds from the e-wallet balance to the GO+ balance, compared to high-interest savings accounts which require you to perform certain tasks to unlock the higher interest tiers.

Meanwhile, the interest rate for fixed deposits with a three-month tenure currently fluctuate between 1.60% to 2.00% (outside of promo campaigns). Money market funds, too, only yield about 1.5% to 2.40% (based on rates by banks and robo advisors).

Based these comparisons, the current TNG GO+ yields are head and shoulders above the other options. But there are some small footnotes to remember…

Key campaign stipulations to take note of

The most important caveat to the TNG GO+ bonus rates is quite straightforward – you can earn the high estimated yields only on a maximum RM9,500. This is because the GO+ wallet can only hold a maximum of RM9,500, and if you have maxed it out, the interest earned goes into the normal wallet, which does not earn anything. This is why we did not include daily compounding interest in the calculation above for the RM9,500 deposit – but the difference would have been minimal due to the relatively short duration and low maximum deposit.

Of course, this still does not mean you shouldn’t put your excess funds here – the high yield, even on a max of RM9,500, still comes up to more than RM100 with effectively no risk.

Besides that, TNG Digital has allocated a total of RM4 million to be distributed as bonus interest throughout the campaign period. In other words, although the campaign is set to run for three months until January 2022, it may not necessarily last that long – especially if many users max out their GO+ wallets.

Lastly, there is a cut-off time for the GO+ balance to earn the 4% p.a. bonus rate, set at 4pm every day. This means that if your GO+ balance falls below RM200 on Day 3 and you forget to top it back up before 4pm, you won’t earn the bonus rate for Day 3.

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All things considered, the 4% GO+ bonus return campaign is a generous offer that serves as an excellent short-term, hassle-free savings instrument if you are looking to park your funds somewhere.

• TAGS:
• GO+
• Longform
• TNG eWallet
• TNG eWallet GO+
• TNG GO+
• Touch 'n Go eWallet