Hello Grasshoppa,

Remember when BigPay came into the market with a bang and became the most talked about debit card around. In fact, they were able to acquire a big group of users by providing tonnes of perks some of which include a saving of up to RM32 when they book their flight via AirAsia and earning BIG Points with every amount spent. With the benefits that they were offering previously, I was an active user & was a big fan of their card. Not sure why but over the years, they have been changing their credit card top up amount & also spending amount to earn BIG Points.

With All The Recent Changes, Is BigPay Still Worth It?

Credit Card Top Up
BigPay started off by allowing their users to top up with a maximum accumulation of RM10,000 per month via credit card, but it was reduced to RM5,000 in March 2020. They later reduced it to RM2,500 in June 2020. On 8th October 2020, they made an announcement to reduce their top up amount to RM1,000. That is a major change in such a short period of time. Of course, you are still able to top up an unlimited amount of money by bank transfer.

BIG Points
During the initial stage, you are able to earn BIG Points when you top up & spend a minimum RM20 to earn 1 BIG Point. They later change it to a minimum spending of RM10 to earn 1 BIG Point but you are not able to earn any BIG Points when you top up. Recently, they made another change where you can only earn 1 BIG Point when you spend a minimum of RM30.

My Thoughts :

Personally, as a user, I feel it is unfair to change whenever they decide to change. Previously I am using my credit card to top up my BigPay so I can earn more BIG Points with my AirAsia Credit Card. Now, it is hard for me to earn BIG Points via Big Pay as I can only earn 333 BIG Points when I top up RM1000 with my AirAsia Credit Card & earn 33 BIG Points when I spend that RM1000 via BigPay. To be honest, it is really low compared to how much BIG Points I am able to earn previously. With the introduction of Raiz, I have recently switched some of my spendings from BigPay to MBB debit card. Although MBB debit card does not allow credit card top up, I am able to save some of my spendings with Raiz & convert it into my investment.

The security of BigPay is also questionable as there has been reportedly BigPay scams going around where some of the users are contacted via phone calls & was asked to provide their TAC & other personal details. Minutes later, they noticed that money was deducted from their BigPay account. I have not faced any issues on this but I have an experience that I was overseas but my BigPay money got deducted at a local restaurant that I went a month before. I immediately called BigPay team to work on this but the staff asked me to talked directly to the restaurant instead. I was also asked to fill up some form the retrieve that money but after filling up & close to a year later, I am still not able to get my money back.

As for now, I am still using BigPay for my e-wallet top up but my confidence level with them is quite low. My advice is top up your BigPay card only when you want to use it but do not keep any significant amount of money there. They may have improved on their security but with all the changes that they made recently, I am not sure if I am still going to use BigPay as frequently as I did.

OSS!