7th August 2026 - 3 min read
If you bank with MBSB Bank and carry an Android phone, you can now pay with your phone instead of your card. The bank has enabled Samsung Wallet and Google Pay for its Visa Debit Card-i, so you can tap to pay at any shop that accepts Visa contactless payments, both in Malaysia and overseas.
Once your card is added to either wallet, you no longer need to dig out the physical card at the counter. All you need to do is hold your phone or your watch near the payment terminal, and the money comes straight out of your MBSB Bank account, the same as if you had tapped the card itself.
Both Samsung Wallet and Google Pay are reachable through M Journey, MBSB Bank’s banking app, which the bank also uses for transfers, payments, and investments. From there, you link your Visa Debit Card-i to whichever wallet your phone supports.
Samsung Wallet works on eligible Samsung devices, while Google Pay covers a wider range of Android phones. If you use an iPhone, you’ll have to wait a while longer. MBSB Bank says it plans to introduce Apple Pay in the coming months, but it has not given a firm date.
MBSB Bank says every payment has to be approved on the device itself, which usually means you’ll have to unlock your device with your fingerprint, face, or PIN. If someone picks up your phone, they still can’t spend from your account without getting past that lock.
The wallets also use tokenisation. Instead of passing your real card number to the shop, your phone sends a one-off digital code for that payment. The shop never sees your actual card number, so a data leak at that merchant does not hand over your card details.
Bank Negara Malaysia’s Annual Report 2025, released on 31 March 2026, recorded 18.4 billion e-payment transactions for the year, up 25% from 14.7 billion in 2024. That works out to 538 e-payments per Malaysian on average, compared with 432 the year before.
Contactless payments specifically grew 20.3% to two billion transactions in 2025. Speaking at the launch, MBSB Bank group chief consumer banking officer Usman Ghouse said retail payment habits are changing quickly, and customers want payment options that are simple and already built into the devices they use daily.
MBSB Bank’s other digital services include Global Easy Transfer, powered by Wise, for sending money abroad, and PrimeGold-i, a digital gold investment service that starts from RM10.
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As a creative content writer, Eloise has covered finance, business, lifestyle topics, and even moonlights as a singer-songwriter outside of RinggitPlus. Her current interests are learning the best ways to optimise spending and credit card hacks to gain more airline miles.
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