I HAVE an issue with the rounding-up adjustments that all the merchants are using when it comes to payment.
When we pay in cash the rounding-up is necessary as no one would be carrying one or two sen to pay for a purchase worth RM1.98. But when we pay digitally, surely the merchants should not be asking us to do the same rounding-up adjustment.
When I transfer RM1.98 online to another account, for example, the banks don't round it up to RM2, do they? Why can't the merchants do that too when it comes to paying digitally?
Plus minus two or three sen here and there a few times a day doesn't mean much to an individual. But for the merchants that's a lot. This is especially so for big corporations as this involves a lot more transactions.
It seems like this act of rounding-up is making us spend and lose money slowly, albeit small in value per day. However, for big businesses, it is significant, accumulatively speaking.
With that being said, the question then is whether the rounding-up adjustment is necessary anymore.
PRAKASH MARIMUTHU
Kuala Lumpur
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The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times