The Vircle DuitNow QR feature puts a payment app in children’s hands outside school for the first time, allowing them to scan and pay at any merchant that accepts DuitNow QR while a parent keeps the controls. Vircle, a Malaysian fintech running since 2020, says the wallet is used across more than 100 schools and serves around 200,000 parents and students, and that it is issued in partnership with Fass Payment Solutions, a licensed e-money and Visa prepaid card issuer.
Source: Price Shop Malaysia, “Vircle brings DuitNow QR payments to kids with parental controls” — the top-up paragraph stating that credit card top-ups carry a 1% convenience fee from 15 October 2026. Captured 3 October 2026 from https://my.priceshop.com/en/news/vircle-brings-duitnow-qr-payments-to-kids-with-parental-controls
The feature is called Scan & Pay for Kids. The mechanics are deliberately ordinary: a child scans a merchant’s DuitNow QR code and the payment completes, which Vircle says takes about three seconds. What is not ordinary is the age of the user, and the reason the feature is worth reading the fine print on is that the controls and the fees do not all arrive on the same date.
What the Vircle DuitNow QR feature actually does
Parents enable Child Login from their own Vircle app. After that the child can pay at participating merchants through DuitNow QR, which is already widely accepted across Malaysia – the national QR standard operated through PayNet rather than a single closed wallet network. Using the existing rail means a child reaches far more merchants than a school-only card would allow.
Alongside DuitNow QR, the account keeps the older Vircle channels: the school card used in canteens and school stores, and a parent-controlled Visa prepaid card accepted at Visa merchants. Vircle says the prepaid card blocks certain merchant categories by default, including vape shops and bars.
Source: Lemon Web Solutions, “Vircle Expands Beyond Schools With DuitNow QR Payments for Children” — the adoption paragraph reporting that 75% of children who completed a first transaction during the month-long soft launch made another the following week. Captured 3 October 2026 from https://www.lemon-web.net/lemon-blog/mobile-development/vircle-expands-beyond-schools-with-duitnow-qr-payments-for-children
The parental controls, in detail
This is where the product either works for a family or does not, so it is worth being specific about what a parent can and cannot do.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Daily spending limit | A cap per day; Vircle says it can be customised by day of the week |
| Real-time notifications | A notification on each payment the child makes |
| Account freeze | Parent can freeze the child’s account from their own phone |
| Parent to child transfer | Money moved from the parent account into the child’s |
| Child to child transfer | Allowed, but only between verified Vircle child accounts |
| Merchant category blocks | Prepaid card declines categories such as vape shops and bars by default |
| Scan & Pay cost to use | Free – Vircle says core safety features are not a paid upgrade |
Vircle’s founder and chief executive Gokula Subramaniam framed the design around supervision rather than approval. The distinction matters in practice: a parent who has to authorise every purchase will stop using the feature, while a parent who can see the spending and intervene once rarely has to.
The 1% fee that starts on 15 October
One line in the launch material deserves to be read twice. Vircle says credit card top-ups will carry a 1% convenience fee starting 15 October 2026. Other top-up routes – FPX online banking, DuitNow transfer, Wise, and Malaysian-issued Visa and Mastercard debit cards – are the routes to check against your own habits before the change lands.
For a family topping up RM200 a month on a credit card, that is RM2. It is not a large sum. The point is that the cost is avoidable by switching rail, and the announcement arrived with the launch rather than as a separate notice, which is easy to miss.
What the 75% repeat figure does and does not tell you
Vircle says 75% of children who completed a first transaction during a month-long soft launch made another transaction the following week. That is a useful signal and it is also an incomplete one. The company did not disclose how many children were in the measurement, so the figure describes the behaviour of those who took part and says nothing about scale or about the children who never made a first transaction at all.
A repeat rate of this kind is normally a retention measure, and retention in a children’s payment product is genuinely the hard part: an app that a child uses once because a parent installed it, and never again, has failed regardless of how the launch reads. Treat the number as directional, and wait for the disclosed base before drawing conclusions about the market.
There is also a promotion attached to the launch. Running until 31 October 2026, 150 prizes worth a total of RM10,000 are being given away, with each payment counting as one entry, no registration, and a limit of one win per account. A carol-style giveaway is a common adoption tactic; it also means transaction counts during October will include people chasing a prize.
Why this is worth watching
The broader shift is that the boundary between a school payment card and an ordinary consumer wallet has now moved. Once a child can scan a DuitNow QR code at a mamak shop, the product is competing with cash and with an adult wallet’s family features rather than with other school cards.
That changes the risk conversation too. Spending limits and notifications are the right controls for the school-gate use case. Whether they are the right controls for a child moving around a shopping centre is a different question, and it is one parents will answer themselves over the next few months as the feature leaves the early schools it was built for.
Sources
- Vircle – official site, Scan & Pay for Kids and parental controls
- Price Shop Malaysia, “Vircle brings DuitNow QR payments to kids with parental controls”
- Lemon Web Solutions, “Vircle Expands Beyond Schools With DuitNow QR Payments for Children”
- PayNet – operator of the DuitNow QR national standard
