New Study Reveals Malaysia E-Wallet Brands’ Unbalanced Approach to Marketing Engagement

The LEWIS Global Marketing Engagement Index™ reveals e-wallet brands need to refocus efforts towards building connections and trust

Kuala Lumpur, 6 September 2021 – TEAM LEWIS, the global marketing agency, launched the E-Wallets Marketing Engagement Index™ report, analysing 15 of the leading e-wallet companies in Malaysia. As a collective, the 15 companies excelled in the areas of site security, social presence, mobile, chat and app metrics. However, a vast majority of the e-wallet brands on the Index have not fully leveraged digital marketing, media, and CSR. The study points to gaps in marketing engagement amongst e-wallet companies and the need for brands to focus less on the technical, vanity aspects of marketing engagement, and more on building stronger connections with audiences.

The analysis is based on a proprietary methodology, the LEWIS Marketing Engagement Tracker™ (LEWIS MET™), that measures and quantifies companies across 9 key categories such as social media, security, personalisation, user experience, that make up the modern marketing mix. It reveals critical insights, such as where brands are both strong and weak, challenged or exposed in their marketing engagement.

“As the fintech market continues to attract more players in Malaysia, competition will remain fierce as companies vie for attention and sustained interest from consumers. In this battle, how a brand is perceived, and its reputation will become almost as fundamental as the product or service it provides. This has never been truer in times of a pandemic when consumers are closely watching the behaviour of some of the country’s popular brands. Tracking consumer sentiment and analytical data will enable marketers to gain clearer insight into what works for their users and what does not,” said Ann Chong, Managing Director, Southeast Asia at TEAM LEWIS.  

Key Findings

• MayBank2U was ranked #1 among the 15 e-wallets analysed in the LEWIS Marketing Engagement Index™, scoring highest across all categories including social presence, digital engagement, site optimisation and CSR. Other brands that made the top 5 are GrabPay, TouchNGo, Boost and Lazada Wallet.
• All brands in the top 5 displayed higher-than-average user experience scores, an attribute that consumers today expect as part of their digital brand experience.
• The top performing brands noticeably pivoted their communications on owned platforms by featuring COVID-19 related information, resources or marketing campaigns.
• Although this showed receptiveness and adaptability, overall scores for CSR projects and community engagements were low amongst all 15 brands.
• In general, the Malaysian e-wallet brands analysed had a higher score for mobile, chat and app as compared to the 2020 Global 300 average by a margin of 8%.
• Malaysian e-wallets outperformed the brands in the 2020 Global 300 by a margin of 4% in terms of its social presence.

Chong added, “In Malaysia, the increasing dependency on digital payments spurred by the pandemic has offered e-wallet brands the unique opportunity to redefine their relationships with customers. According to our report, e-wallets are already making notable investments in ensuring a seamless customer experience across mobile, chat and app, ranking higher than the global standard.”

In addition to the key findings, the report outlines the performance of the top 5 e-wallet brands, key marketing recommendations and concluding with an outlook of the e-wallet industry.

The full report can be downloaded here. Companies interested in a free assessment can get in touch with TEAM LEWIS Malaysia at [email protected].