A think tank has recommended rollouts by state or ID number to avoid payment terminal overloads as seen during the first day of the RM100 Sumbangan Asas Rahmah (SARA) aid rollout last Sunday.
The one-off aid, redeemable until Dec 31, allows Malaysian adults to purchase essential goods via their MyKads.
Many recipients encountered checkout failures and long delays in processing purchases during the first day of the aid’s rollout, with the finance ministry and MyKasih apologising after stating that the high volume of activity had strained the system.
In a statement, the Social & Economic Research Initiative (Seri) said the overloads had undermined beneficiaries’ experience, with some forced to pay by cash despite having SARA credit, eroding confidence not only in the programme but also in future digital public service rollouts.
Seri suggested fallbacks for outages such as secure e-vouchers or claim-later reimbursement be considered to ensure that recipients are not stranded at the till.
Its other recommendations included real-time public dashboards for system status and recovery, stronger merchant readiness particularly in rural areas, and independent post-mortems after each rollout.
It also suggested clearer branding and multilingual FAQs to reduce confusion between the one-off SARA aid and targeted monthly SARA aid, alongside stronger anti-scam measures such as a single official portal, pre-announced domains, and rapid takedown of fake links.
“Digital social protection is the right direction, but to make it durable, we must engineer trust by designing robust systems, transparent communications, strong merchant networks, and visible accountability,” said Seri chairman Helmy Haja Mydin.
