Press Release

PETALING JAYA: RHB Banking Group’s (RHB) #JomSapot and Star Media Group’s (SMG) BeliLokal today embarked on a campaign with the aim to support Malaysian businesses and spur the nation’s economic recovery.

Over the past two years, with the drastic changes in the economic landscape and the resulting paradigm shift arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses – especially micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) – have been impacted badly.

In this move to bring hope and positivity to local businesses as the country ushers in the new year, the two parties have come together in a collaborative effort dubbed #JomSapot BeliLokal to play their parts in helping the nation recover and thrive once again.

“We are constantly looking for ways to help even more SMEs and through the strategic collaboration with SMG anchored against #JomSapot and the BeliLokal initiative, we are able to provide a new avenue with a strong boost to businesses by leveraging SMG’s extensive media readership to further drive visibility and awareness of the SME business activity as well as products and services being offered.

“It is therefore our hope that SMEs will participate and make full use of this platform to reach out and capitalise on new business opportunities,” said RHB group community banking managing director Jeffrey Ng.

Local merchants – across the categories of food and beverage, travel, home and living, health and wellness, retail as well as services – will be provided exclusive free product listings on RHB’s #JomSapot and SMG’s BeliLokal for six months and other marketing communications, in order to promote their products and services to consumers at no additional cost when they onboard the campaign.

This means that besides being listed on the #JomSapot BeliLokal platform, the merchants’ products and services will also be published in digital, print and radio across The Star, mStar and 988FM to reach a broader audience.

In addition, the collaborative platform provides end-to-end support to businesses, which includes RHB facilitating the merchants in managing customer payments with ease through DuitNow QR via the RHB Reflex Mobile App.

“SMG has been trying to help struggling Malaysian micro and SMEs and to bring our effort to the next level, we are now joining hands with RHB via the #JomSapot BeliLokal collaboration, which leverages the strengths of our respective organisations.

“Via this campaign, businesses can reach a larger audience that will improve their bottom lines, while consumers can discover and support local businesses towards the nation’s economic recovery,” said SMG chief business officer Lydia Wang.

To join the campaign, new merchants will need to sign up for an RHB Business Current Account to get exposure to promote their businesses, while existing merchants just need to self-register to be part of the #JomSapot BeliLokal campaign at no added cost.

Meanwhile, for RHB customers participating and supporting these local merchants via #JomSapot BeliLokal, they can earn up to 10 million loyalty points to redeem over 8,000 gifts and vouchers when they spend at #JomSapot merchants with RHB Credit and/or Debit Card/-i or DuitNow QR.

Selected merchants will also be featured in one of the three exclusive ‘Sapot Lokal Day’ live-selling sessions within the first half of the year, which will take place in March, April and June.

This builds on RHB’s #JomSapot campaign, which helps SMEs accelerate business activity by easily and conveniently promoting their products and services to RHB’s existing four million customer base at zero cost to them.

Since its 2020 launch, #JomSapot has quickly gained traction and has since attracted over 5,700 outlets operated by SMEs in Malaysia from various industry segments.

Merchant transactions have increased considerably, with #JomSapot merchants recording credit card and debit card spend growth of 12% and 20%, respectively. RHB’s DuitNow QR transaction value also grew by six times and transaction volume grew by seven times through the campaign.