Govt: No More 10% Surcharge When You Use Touch n’ Go to Pay Parking Soon

Good news, Touch n’ Go users! That pesky 10% surcharge when you use the card to pay in parking facilities will soon be gone. Yay, save more money! This announcement was made in a Dewan Rakyat session on Wednesday (November 6th) and the 10% will be removed in due course.

Source: NST

According to The Star, this 10% surcharge that is usually found at parking lots with dual payment systems will soon be a thing of the past and for all new contractors, this charge will not be applicable. Deputy Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Chong Chieng Jen said, “Touch n’ Go card has taken the initiative that in all its future contractors or renewal of contractors, there will not be the surcharge rate based on the merchant discount rate. For existing contracts, the surcharge rate will end in stages.”

He added that this surcharge was actually a contractual obligation that was inherited from the previous government, and he understands that it is a burden on consumers. The current government wants to abolish this but since there are existing contracts, it is not possible to do so now.

Source: The Star

He explained that this surcharge is only applicable for carparks that use dual payment systems. For those facilities that only use the Touch n’ Go payment system, the 10% surcharge will not be imposed. He also clarified that for the 50 sen surcharge imposed on customers for card top-ups, there are now 2,880 locations out of 11,168 places in Malaysia that do not have this surcharge. 

Some of these places include Touch n’ Go service counters, Watsons, Tesco, Guardian, KK Mart and Caring Pharmacy. When asked, Chong explained that this surcharge was not implemented by Touch n’ Go itself but the operators of the outlets. He added that Touch n’ Go is not considered to be a monopoly as there are also other e-payment cards in the market.

Hopefully, we can save more money in the future when this happens!