The study surveyed 504 people across Yangon, Pathein, Mandalay and Magway in September 2018.

“The higher interest towards using electronic payments can be accredited to industry players and the government, who have been driving the cashless agenda. We believe everyone has much to gain by moving from cash to electronic payments,” said Lillian Wang, country manager for Visa Myanmar.

Some 42pc of the respondents said that they expect to use cashless payments more in the coming year with 69pc stating that convenience is the top reason to go cashless. 58pc said security is the reason to use cashless methods and 52pc said not having to carry physical cash is the reason.

Moreover, the survey discovered that more than 60pc of consumers use cashless payments to settle payment in hypermarkets and supermarkets. Shopping malls are at 57pc, restaurants at 52pc and convenience stores at 50 pc.

However, awareness about other contactless payment methods is still low with only 21pc of those surveyed stating that they are aware of using contactless cards, compared to 13pc in the previous year.

Awareness on mobile contactless payments is also low with only 10pc of respondents knowing about such method. But  nearly half, 46pc, said they are interested in using it.

The level of awareness on QR payments remains similar to the previous year and is the lowest among the alternative methods at 9pc. Interest in using QR payments has however has increased to 33pc from 21pc in the previous year.

Besides Visa, KBZPay, CBPay, WaveMoney and OKDollar also provide options for consumers to make cashless transactions in Myanmar.

Source: https://www.mmtimes.com/news/myanmar-consumers-still-lack-wide-awareness-cashless-payment-systems.html