Disclaimer: This post contains a referral. By using my referral, I will earn RM10 once you activate your card. You will also get RM10. The referral code is ZN8IKOD38O. Note that the two circular characters are the letter “O” and not the numeral “0”!

Last Updated:

• 15 October 2020 – BigPay has made some significant changes since my last update, including:
  • Earn rate on spend reduced from 1 BIG Point per RM10 to 1 BIG Point per RM30 spend
  • Launched in Singapore (note the referral code only works for Malaysia)
  • Reduced top up limit from Credit Cards to RM1000/calendar month
• 7 April 2020 – Updated some typos in the post, and added a section on the ability to transfer money out from BigPay to bank accounts in Malaysia and several overseas countries.
• 26 October 2019 – BigPay no longer offer points for top ups, and have doubled the earning rate for spend. You now earn 1 AirAsia BIG Point per RM10 spent (previously 1 AirAsia BIG Point per RM20 spent). Have updated all references in the post to remove such references.

BigPay – Malaysian Prepaid Debit Card – Free RM10 with Referral – No Foreign Transaction Surcharges!

Deal Rating: 7/10 – Free RM10, Free Prepaid Credit Card, which waives overseas transaction fees, earns a small amount of (AirAsia) points, and can be topped up with a Credit Card but is only applicable to Malaysians.

RM10 (~$3.33) for free!

I haven’t posted anything Malaysia-specific so far, and I never intended to because it’s not really my “target market”. However, this is actually a decent deal – and it’s relevant to me and probably a lot of the other thousands of Malaysians who ply their trade in Singapore, so I’m sharing it.

This deal is currently only applicable to Malaysian residents.

To get your free RM10…

1. Download the BigPay App (Google Play Store/iOS
2. Go through the registration process which goes in the following order:
   • Select Country of Residence (Malaysia/Singapore)
   • Nominate a phone number (it seems non-Malaysia numbers are fine) to receive a OTP (one-time PIN)
   • Set a PIN to login to the BigPay app on your phone
   • Personal Details. The key ones being:
     • Email
     • Name (as per IC/Passport)
     • DOB
     • Nationality
     • Referral Code: ZN8IKOD38O
     • Address (and Mailing Address)
   • Take a photo of your IC/Passport and a selfie of yourself as part of the verification process. Finally, submit. At this point. You will need to wait for a notification from BigPay before you can initiate the next steps. Once the verification is complete…
3. Top up RM20 to your account – this is required, otherwise 2 things will happen:
   • Your card will not get sent out
   • You will not receive the “free RM10”

Onto the product itself…

There are several aspects of this particular product which I find quite appealing.

I kind of summarised it at the top in the deal rating part, but once again:

• It’s a Prepaid Card
• It (currently) waives international and foreign transaction fees
• You can earn a small amount of AirAsia points for each transaction
• You can top it up with a Credit Card – and it’s not charged as a Cash Advance
• You can withdraw the money out to Malaysian bank accounts, as well as bank accounts in limited overseas countries

Let’s go through these benefits, one-by-one.

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Free RM10

Come on, I don’t need to explain this..

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It’s a Prepaid Card

The advantages of prepaid cards are around security and control rather than flexibility. This means your financial risk is limited to the amount of money you have stored in your card. It also means if you’re required to give your Credit Card details for a free trial, you can use this and ensure you have no money inside to ensure you don’t get charged if you forget to unsubscribe.

Of course, the slight disadvantage is that you can’t process transactions if you don’t have enough money in your account.

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Waives International and Foreign Transaction Fees

List of fees on their official page

Firstly, it says there’s a RM10 refundable join fee. I don’t know what this refers to – I wasn’t charged a cent to get the card.

Back to this particular perk, this is quite straightforward. I don’t know the Malaysian Credit Card market well enough, but I presume this is not a particularly common feature amongst Malaysian Credit Cards. I would not be surprised if this is the only card in the market at the moment with this feature. This should save you around 3% off every transaction – which is not a small amount.

Specifically, see the fees under “Currency Conversion Fee” and “Cross-Border Transaction Fee”, which are both “waived until further notice”. Note that “Currency Conversion Fee” still says “Only charges by the network will be applied”. My interpretation of this is that you’ll be charged at the rates as per the network – i.e. Mastercard/Visa/AMEX, which in this case is Mastercard – without any surcharge being applied.

The “waived until further notice” below some of the fees suggests these could change in the future. Before you get worried though, think about this practically. If it did not say “waived until further notice”, would it suggest things can’t change? No. I wouldn’t read into it. Businesses are generally able to change things whenever they want, regardless.

Also, their FAQ section states the same thing under “Exchange Rates”.

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Earn some AirAsia Points for each Transaction

Page with information around AirAsia points earn rates

Points are earned as follows:

1 BIG Point for every RM30 spent

The 1 BIG point per RM30 is credited on a per transaction basis. This means if you spend RM15 and then RM15 again in two different transactions, you would earn 0pts. The value of the transactions do not get added together (like a final statement) to earn you 1 point.

How much is 1 BIG Point? It looks like it’s absolutely peanuts – so that’s a bit of a letdown… but you either earn some points, or no points. This doesn’t mean you replace an existing Credit Card with this though. See the next point if you’re not sure what I mean.

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You can top it up with a Credit Card

Ok, this benefit is a little obscure.

This is a benefit assuming topping up with Credit Card does not incur a cash advance, and it does not, as at October 2020.

This means:

• It’s an indirect way for you to increase your spend on a Credit Card, in case you have any minimum spend requirements on your Credit Card to reach particular thresholds. This buys you time to actually make that expenditure.
  • This is useful because you may need to spend $X in December, and if you’re a little short, just top up your BigPay card using this card until you reach $X. You’ve now artificially extended your time to use this money because you’ve put it into a prepaid card.
  • You may, however, need to double check that this kind of transaction is considered eligible spend for your minimum spend requirements
• Also good for random Credit Card promotions along the lines of “Spend $X in Malaysia and get $Y”. As an example, I was sent a targeted AMEX promotion which was spend $500 SGD equivalent in MYR and get $20. If I had BigPay at the time, I could’ve just topped up my BigPay account to qualify.
• As at October 2019, several have started to crack down on the ability to “double dip”, with Maybank probably being the most notable. What this means is you will not earn Credit Card reward points/rebates on top ups to BigPay

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You can transfer the money out to Bank Accounts

I have personally used this feature to transfer money to a Malaysian bank account. There is a fee of RM0.50 per transaction, capped at RM1000/day, or RM2000/month. At RM0.50, it is actually extremely affordable.

As for transfers to overseas bank accounts, I have not tried this yet, but the fees vary depending on the country in which you wish to make the transfer to. I can’t comment on this aspect as yet.

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Finally, withdrawing from ATMs, whether in Malaysia or overseas is not free, so keep that in mind.

Random side benefit which is not particularly relevant to me – no payment processing fees when making payments with AirAsia, as well as discounts on check-in luggage and in-flight meals. That’s actually pretty cool!

I was in Malaysia for about a week at the end of December 2018 and found the experience using the card to be really good. On a side note, the Android app is actually really sleek and nicely made.

Oh, and don’t lose your card. A replacement card costs RM20.

Some ideas on how else to effectively use this card? Use it to top up your GrabPay, Boost eWallet and Touch n Go eWallet account balances. And – how to optimise it even more?

If you don’t think you’ll use your GrabPay/Boost/TnG eWallet often, it’s probably just a better idea to only top up what you need – thereby preventing you from having a large leftover balance of credit in either app. As I mentioned above, 1 BIG Point is worth very little.