Short version: Maybank Global Access Account-i is a good place to hold and move large sums, and a bad travel card unless you plan ahead. Wise is still cheaper per ringgit, but Malaysia's limits on it are tighter than most people realise, and they are not the limits you think.
I wrote this comparison in August 2025. Fees on both sides have moved since, one of my own claims was wrong, and Maybank has quietly added a tax. So here is the whole thing again with current numbers.
The Three Wise Limits Everyone Confuses
This is the part that gets repeated wrongly everywhere, including in my own earlier version of this post, so let me fix it first.
Wise publishes three separate limits for Malaysian residents, and people mash them into one.
| Limit | What it caps | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Holding limit | How much you can keep in the account | RM20,000 |
| Daily send limit | MYR converted or sent abroad per day | RM30,000 |
| Monthly count | Cross-currency transfers per month | 13, to a maximum of 7 recipients |
The RM20,000 is a holding cap, not a transfer cap. Wise's own words: you "won't be able to hold more than 20,000 MYR equivalent in your personal Wise account across all of your currencies." Balances and Jars both count, converted at the mid-market rate. If money lands that pushes you over, the whole incoming transaction gets bounced or swept out, not just the excess.
Sending is governed by a different number: RM30,000 a day.
I had this wrong before. I described the RM20,000 as a daily limit and then did the arithmetic on that basis. It made Wise look worse at small sizes and better at large ones than it actually is.
Here is what the real limits do to a big transfer:
| You want to move | Days at RM30k/day | Monthly transfers used |
|---|---|---|
| RM50,000 | 2 | 2 of 13 |
| RM100,000 | 4 | 4 of 13 |
| RM400,000 | 14 | 14 of 13, so it does not fit in one month |
That last row is the real ceiling, and almost nobody talks about it. The binding constraint on large transfers is not the daily amount, it is the 13 cross-currency transfers per month. Past roughly RM390,000 in a calendar month, Wise simply runs out of transfers.
One more thing worth knowing: transfers from Wise to your own Malaysian bank account have no daily limit. Money coming home is easy. It is money going out that is capped.
What Wise Actually Costs Now
The old version of this post said Wise charges about 0.54% to convert MYR to USD. That is no longer true, and it was probably a favourable snapshot even then.
I pulled these from Wise's own pricing engine, funding by FPX and paying out to a bank account:
| You send | Fee | As % |
|---|---|---|
| RM1,000 | RM13.38 | 1.34% |
| RM10,000 | RM69.73 | 0.70% |
| RM20,000 | RM132.34 | 0.66% |
| RM50,000 | RM320.16 | 0.64% |
| RM100,000 | RM633.18 | 0.63% |
The fee is a fixed RM7 or so plus about 0.63%, which is why small transfers look terrible. Sending RM100 costs 7.76% and sending RM500 costs 2.05%. Wise is not cheap for small amounts, whatever the marketing says.
There is also a wrinkle at size. Above RM20,000 the FPX funding option disappears, and Wise quotes you a plain bank transfer instead. Same fee, slower. The convenient route is capped even when the transfer itself is allowed.
What Maybank Actually Costs Now
Two corrections to my own earlier post here, and one new tax.
The RM8 is not a card annual fee. I called it that last year and it is not one. There is no annual fee on the account or the card at all, and the card runs for seven years.
The RM8 buys unlimited withdrawals at Maybank ATMs. You do not need it to withdraw money: the first four withdrawals a month are already free, and the RM0.50 charge after that is waived if your balance is above RM5,000 or the withdrawal itself is RM1,500 or more. It is deducted automatically when you activate the account, so year one is compulsory, but you can opt out at a branch for the years after.
For most people the free tier already covers it, so treat the RM8 as a one-off you cannot avoid rather than a recurring cost.
The USD22 is not Maybank's fee. This one matters more. Maybank publishes USD22 against outward telegraphic transfers, and I repeated it as if Maybank were charging it. It is the agent bank charge, the correspondent bank's cut. Maybank's own outward fee is RM10.
Whether you actually pay the USD22 depends on the charge option you pick. Choose to pay agent charges yourself and you pay it. Let the recipient absorb them and it comes out of the amount that arrives instead. My earlier post presented one number as the whole cost, which was too simple.
And there is now 8% SST on top of both the service fee and the agent charge, effective 27 April 2026. That is new since I last wrote this, and it applies to the application fee, the agent or beneficiary fee, and the service fee.
The current published charges, straight from Maybank's product page:
| Maybank's fee | Agent charge (USD) | |
|---|---|---|
| Outward TT | RM10 + 8% SST | USD22 |
| Inward TT | RM5 (MYR) | USD4 |
Other currencies carry different agent charges. GBP is 10, EUR 23, SGD 24, JPY 3,005, AUD 7. The Maybank side stays RM10 regardless.
The daily outward transfer limit is RM100,000 through the app. Branches have no limit.
The Travel Card Trap
This is the section I most want to correct, because the old post let the account off too lightly.
The account advertises no conversion fees. That is true only if you pre-convert inside the MAE app and hold enough of that currency. Maybank's own card FAQ lays out what happens otherwise, and it turns on a setting called Auto Sweep:
| Auto Sweep on | Auto Sweep off | |
|---|---|---|
| Supported currency, enough balance | Free | Free |
| Supported currency, not enough | 1% Mastercard + 1% conversion cost | Rejected, no fee |
| Unsupported currency | 1% Mastercard + 1% conversion cost | Rejected, no fee |
So the card is free exactly when you have planned ahead, and 2% every other time. Leaving Auto Sweep on means you never get declined but you quietly pay 2% whenever you are short. Turning it off means you keep the 2% at bay but risk your card being refused at the counter.
Now look at which currencies it supports. There are 18 in total, and one of them is ringgit:
AED, AUD, BND, CAD, CHF, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD, JPY, NOK, NZD, QAR, SAR, SEK, SGD, USD
Read that list against where Malaysians actually go. No Thai baht. No Vietnamese dong. No Indonesian rupiah. No Korean won. No Chinese yuan. No Philippine peso. Bangkok, Bali, Da Nang, Seoul, and Guangzhou are all 2% trips on this card, and there is no pre-converting your way out of it because the currency is not offered.
For Singapore, Japan, Europe, the UK, Australia or the US, pre-convert in the app and the card genuinely costs nothing to spend. For most of the region, it costs 2%.
Overseas ATM withdrawals are RM12 each, on both supported and unsupported currencies, and the request is simply rejected if you do not have the balance. Maybank's page still advertises five free ones, but that promotion expired on 12 March 2026 and the stale text is just sitting there.
Compare that to the two cards people actually carry:
| Card | Overseas spending |
|---|---|
| GXBank debit | No markup, plus 1% cashback on overseas in-store |
| TNG Visa travel card | Tiered cashback to 3%, in-store only, campaign runs to 31 Dec 2026 |
| Maybank GAA-i | Free if pre-converted and supported, otherwise 2% |
GXBank's wording is "ZERO markups on exchange rates," though its FAQ says "currently," which is a word banks use when they want the option to change their mind. TNG's card changed since my last post: it is now a separate Visa Travel Card on a 0.5/1.5/3.0% tiered structure, and the cashback does not apply online, which is exactly where most people spend.
For travel, the Maybank card is still not the answer.
So Which One For Funding a Broker?
This is the question the post gets asked most, so let me answer it directly.
Under RM20,000, use Wise. It is cheaper, it is faster, and you are nowhere near any limit. At RM10,000 you pay about RM70. Maybank would cost you RM10 plus SST plus a USD22 agent charge, which on RM10,000 is worse. I costed every funding route in more detail in how to fund an IBKR account from Malaysia.
Between RM20,000 and RM100,000, it depends on your patience. Wise still wins on percentage, but you are splitting it across days and burning your monthly transfer count. Maybank does RM100,000 in one shot, in about half a day.
Above RM100,000 in a month, Maybank starts making sense, and past roughly RM390,000 Wise cannot do it at all inside one calendar month.
The honest framing is that Wise is cheaper per ringgit and Maybank is cheaper per hassle. If you are buying a dip, hassle costs more than the spread.
What a Real RM100,000 Transfer Looked Like
A friend of mine read the original version of this post, got curious, and let me document his entire transfer so I could publish it. This is the part I would not have known from reading product pages, and it has not changed since.
The rate changes between screens. On the first screen, converting RM100,000 showed USD23,664.04 with no fee. Press next and the rate is different. He retested this several times and it happened every time, so it is not a stale quote timing out.
The daily limit is checked against a different rate than the one you converted at. After converting the full RM100,000 he could not send the resulting balance, because the app said it exceeded the RM100,000 limit. He tried USD23,500, then 23,400, then 23,300, and finally got USD23,000 to go through.
Then the receipt disagreed with reality. The confirmation showed USD23,000 sent. The amount that actually landed in IBKR was USD23,300, which was one of the amounts the app had just rejected.
Transfer receipt says USD23,000
IBKR received USD23,300
All in, that transfer cost about 0.27% more than the same amount through Wise, roughly USD62 on RM100,000. Most of the gap came from the conversion rate on the second screen rather than the headline fees.
The upside: he started early morning and the money was in IBKR by evening, under twelve hours.
So the RM100,000 daily limit is real, but treat it as an approximate ceiling rather than an exact one, and do not trust the first rate the app shows you.
Getting Money Back Out
For withdrawals from a foreign broker, the ranking has not changed much.
CIMB Singapore is still the cheapest route I know of. Convert USD to SGD inside the broker at mid-market, withdraw to CIMB Singapore, then convert SGD to MYR during business hours. That account is still open to Malaysians remotely using your NRIC, funded with S$1,000 to start.
Maybank's inward telegraphic transfer fee is USD4, which is genuinely low, and much lower than its outward side. If you are receiving rather than sending, the account looks a lot better.
I still use a Charles Schwab International debit card for spending USD directly, which avoids converting at all.
About My Wise Account
I should be upfront about something, because it affects what I can and cannot test.
My Wise account was closed years ago, and Wise never told me why. I could not get an exact reason out of them, and eventually I gave up trying to get the account back. I am not going to speculate about what triggered it, because I genuinely do not know.
It matters less than it would have once. I am not doing meaningful deposits anymore, mostly just managing money I already have. When I do need to move money, Maybank GAA-i and my CIMB Singapore account cover it.
But it does mean the Wise numbers in this post come from Wise's published pricing rather than from my own account, and I would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
If it happens to you, the practical answer is the same as the one above: Maybank GAA-i for large lump sums, CIMB Singapore for withdrawals, GXBank for spending abroad. None of them are Wise, and none of them can be closed on you without warning in quite the same way, because they are banks with a Malaysian branch you can walk into.
Worth Opening?
Yes, as a second account. Not as your only one.
Maybank Global Access Account-i is good at exactly two things: moving RM100,000 in one transfer, and receiving foreign currency cheaply at USD4. Both of those are real, and Wise cannot match either.
It is bad at travel spending unless your destination is on the supported list, and it has added no new currencies in the fifteen months since launch despite promising more were coming. Hong Leong went from 12 to 21 currencies in June 2026. RHB has 33. Maybank has 17 foreign currencies and is now third.
There is no annual fee, so the cost of having one open is nothing. That alone makes it worth doing before you need it, because opening an account in a hurry when you are trying to catch a market move is how people make expensive mistakes.
Are you using Global Access for anything, or has your bank's own multi-currency account already caught up? And if you have had a Wise account closed on you, what did you switch to? Let me know in the comments.
