KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — Economic Affairs Minister Rafizi Ramli had denied claims that the Central Database Hub’s (Padu) eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) process of uploading a selfie while holding the identification card, will take three days.

He posted on X that the process takes under five minutes to confirm and approve currently.

"As of 5pm, over 40,000 eKYCs have been confirmed and registrations in the eKYC queue (to be confirmed) is under 300. With the current performance, the eKYC will be processed by the algorithm in less than five minutes, so there won’t be a situation that it takes three days,” he said.

On Bangi MP Ong Kian Ming’s post on X urging people to register for Padu out of concern that their identification card details could be used by other individuals to sign them up without their knowledge, Rafizi said that users could go directly to the online Helpdesk, or contact the call centre or show up at the physical counter if such a case arose.

Padu is developed using internal expertise from the Economic Affairs Ministry, the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), with the cooperation and support of various ministries, agencies and state governments.

All Malaysians aged 18 and above need to register or review the data in the Padu portal and update and confirm 39 personal details. — Bernama