Razer Pay came out in full force at MyFintech Week 2019, but we were very disappointed with what we discovered when we tried it out for ourselves.

We found some truly mind-boggling issues and bizarre design choices in Razer Pay. We reached out to the Razer Pay team for their feedback, and hope they will fix these issues ASAP!

 

Razer Pay

From what we understand, the current Razer Pay app is a brand new app. No longer a reskinned version of MOLPay they bought over last year.

Yet it feels half-baked, even though it is chock-full of features. You can transfer money to your friends, perform mobile top-ups, and even purchase game credits or streaming services.

 

Why Razer Pay Is Still Not Ready For Prime Time

Installation was a breeze, but once we started the registration process, we noticed a few troubling things…

Issue #1 : No Confirmation Of Critical Information

Razer Pay will require you to key in three pieces of critical information :

• a password to protect your app, and ensure that only you can access it and make changes
• a passcode to authorise payments
• your email address for verification and password recovery

A mistake in any of the above will result in a registration failure, or worse – getting locked out of your own Razer Pay account.

This is why most app designers will insist that you key in those information TWICE, so they can verify that you entered them correctly.

Unfortunately, the Razer Pay team chose to ignore industry best practices… so GG to those who are prone to typos…

Issue #2 : SMS OTP Failure

After you key in your phone number, Razer Pay will send a 6-digit One Time Password (OTP) to your phone number.

However, the OTP SMS never arrived.

Fortunately, they did not forget to include a Resend code option, because everyone we knew who tried it over a few days received it only on the second try.

Corrected : After we pointed out to them, Razer Pay said they switched to a different OTP service provider.

These things happen, of course, but considering they were demonstrating and promoting the app and service at MyFintech Week 2019, they should have gone with a more reliable service provider.

Issue #3 : Your Registration Will Fail If You Use A Referral QR Code

Now this was really bizarre… Using a referral QR code will cause the account registration to fail.

It will just get stuck at “Creating your account…”

In the end, you will have to kill the app, which means losing whatever you keyed in earlier.

But don’t waste your time trying again, because it will keep failing…

Corrected : After we pointed out to them, the Razer Pay team identified the problem and resolved it for Android users… but iOS users had to wait a few more days for the fix.

Issue #4 : They Use Your Phone Number As The Personal Invite Code!

Razer Pay offers you a pitiful RM 1 (US$0.24) for each person you refer. But to support your endeavour to earn a free cup of coffee, they offer you two options – a QR code and a manual code.

When you click to share the code manually, you will note that it lists your PHONE NUMBER as the Personal Code!

This would be a SERIOUS breach of privacy, if they are actually using your phone number as the referral code, even if it was hidden in a QR code.

After all, many people post their referral codes online, and do not expect to share their phone numbers, which are highly personal and private…

The Razer Pay team later clarified that when you click on the Share icon, the app will generate a QR code with an encrypted invitation code, like this :

https://api-my.pay.razer.com/v1/creatingInvitationLinks?inviteCode=edc34d7b95f740a7a213f04fd212eacc&country=Malaysia

Apparently, that encrypted invitation code is generated using your actual phone number… so someone on their team decided to put it there.

It’s mind-boggling why they decided to post your phone number under Share Your Invite Code, because it would only lead users to assume that their phone number is the actual referral code.

And even though it’s encrypted, anyone would be able to figure out your actual phone number if they have the encryption algorithm (through hacking or leaks). It would be better to create a separate account number, which offers an additional layer of obfuscation.

Not Corrected : Razer Pay said that they would remove the phone number as Personal Code, but as of today, it is still there.

Issue #5 : The Manual Referral Code Does Not Work

Razer Pay actually includes an option to key in a referral code manually. That implies two things :

• the Personal Code (as shared in Issue #4) is the manual referral code
• you can install Razer Pay and add your friend’s referral code after registration

However, neither are true… because even if you try to use the phone number, you will get the error code that “This code does not exist“.

If you extract the encrypted code (e.g. edc34d7b95f740a7a213f04fd212eacc) and key that in instead, you will get a different error code in broken English – “You register before accepting the invitation, you cannot accept the invitation”

In other words, the manual referral code entry option is pointless, because there is no way to add any referral code after you register…

According to Razer Pay, the problem may occur if the code is generated after the user registers his or her account.

However, we tried this with another account and it didn’t work. Oh well…

 

Razer Pay Still Has A LONG Way To Go

Now everyone and their grandfathers want to create their own e-wallet. It’s getting really absurd, because guess what – we all lived with a single wallet but now you want us to juggle multiple e-wallets???

Eventually, people will settle on one, maybe two e-wallets… and for those who are trying to become the e-wallet of choice, it pays to prepare well and execute flawlessly.

For now, Razer Pay still has a long way to go before we will even consider using it as a secondary e-wallet, never mind our primary e-wallet, or an actual replacement for our wallets.

If we have one piece of advice for them, it would be to actually test their app and services before deploying. Generally, users do not like to feel like beta testers, especially when it comes to finance…

Note : We have only commented so far on the registration and referral features. If we start talking about the other features… well, it’s gonna be a really long review!

 

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