Holding limits if you live in Malaysia

Holding limits mean the amount of money you can legally hold in your Wise balance if you live in a particular region.

Due to local regulations in Malaysia, if your registered address is in Malaysia, you won’t be able to hold more than 20,000 MYR equivalent in your personal Wise account across all of your balances.

What are the holding limits in Malaysia?

For personal accounts, any money you keep in your Wise balances or Jars, in any currency, counts toward the 20,000 MYR limit.

For businesses, new business accounts in Malaysia can’t have balances. But if you already have balances, there are no holding limits. 

How do you calculate my MYR balance if I’m holding a different currency? 

If you hold money in other currencies, we’ll calculate the value in MYR using the mid-market rate. 

For example, let’s say you have:

• 10,000 MYR in your MYR balance, and

• 3,500 USD incoming transfer to your USD balance

With an exchange rate of 1 USD = 4.40 MYR, the USD transfer equals 15,400 MYR.

Adding this to your MYR balance gives you a total of 25,400 MYR, which exceeds the 20,000 MYR holding limit.

What happens if I exceed the holding limit?

If an incoming transaction causes your account to exceed 20,000 MYR or equivalent at any point of the day, the transaction won't be credited into your Wise account. Instead, you'll see an action required from you in the Tasks section.

You can either:

1. Set up an MYR external bank account (see below how to set up); or 

2. Refund the transaction

If you already have an MYR external account set, the entire incoming transaction bringing you over the holding limit will be automatically swept to the nominated account.

If the incoming transaction isn't in MYR, we'll need to perform a conversion to MYR, where the standard fees will apply.

How do I set up an external account?

Your external bank account must be in your name, and it can’t be your own Wise account. It has to be an account that's denominated in MYR.

You can only set up your external account from web:

1. Go to Recipients

2. Select your external MYR bank account, or add a new one 

3. Toggle on My Account toggle

4. An External account option will appear — select Set Up and follow the steps.

This MYR external account will be saved, and future incoming transactions causing you to go above the holding limit will automatically be swept to this account.