Screen 06 · unit economics
Only the service fee is revenue. The stamp duty is the government's money passing through. Every figure below counts the fee and ignores the duty, which is why the numbers are smaller than the transaction values suggest.
Assumptions, all adjustable in the model. Roughly 80% of jobs are stamping at RM15 and 20% are drafting at RM50, giving a blended fee of RM22 a job. Each active agent submits 2.5 jobs a month. 22 working days a month. Growth follows an S curve: slow start while agencies are onboarded one relationship at a time, then acceleration by word of mouth, then saturation.
For scale, Malaysia has roughly 30,000 to 35,000 registered negotiators. The expected case reaches about 360 active agents by month 24, which is around 1% of them. The strong case is about 2.5%.
The honest caveat. The incumbent has been trading since 2018 and still uses a Gmail address for customer contact, with two unfinished pages on its site. That is not the profile of a business clearing RM20,000 a month. Read the slow curve as the default and the expected curve as what happens only if the client already has agency relationships to switch on. Ask the middleman where their deal flow comes from before believing any of these lines.
The margin trap
This is the reason the payment gateway choice matters, and it is not obvious. The client charges the agent duty plus fee in one transaction, but only the fee is theirs. A gateway that takes a percentage takes it from the whole amount, including the government's share.
| Gateway pricing | Fee | Client keeps | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPX, flat RM1.00 | RM1.00 | RM14.00 | 93% |
| FPX, flat RM1.50 | RM1.50 | RM13.50 | 90% |
| 1.8% + RM0.40 | RM4.74 | RM10.26 | 68% |
| Card, 3% + RM1.00 | RM8.23 | RM6.77 | 45% |
| Gateway pricing | Fee | Client keeps | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPX, flat RM1.00 | RM1.00 | RM14.00 | 93% |
| FPX, flat RM1.50 | RM1.50 | RM13.50 | 90% |
| 1.8% + RM0.40 | RM12.51 | RM2.49 | 17% |
| Card, 3% + RM1.00 | RM21.19 | −RM6.19 | Loss |
On a high duty job paid by card with percentage pricing, the client loses money on every transaction. RM21.19 of gateway fees against RM15 of revenue. The bigger the tenancy, the worse it gets, because the fee scales with the government's money rather than with theirs.
So two rules follow. Insist on flat fee FPX as the primary method. And if cards are offered at all, either surcharge them or raise the service fee on card payments. Rates shown are illustrative and must be confirmed against the chosen provider's own pricing page before they go in any client document.
Cost per job
| Item | With batch export | Without |
|---|---|---|
| Blended service fee | RM22.00 | RM22.00 |
| Gateway, flat FPX | −RM1.20 | −RM1.20 |
| Staff time to process1 | −RM0.85 | −RM3.40 |
| Hosting and tooling | −RM0.40 | −RM0.40 |
| Contribution per job | RM19.55 | RM17.00 |
At 900 jobs a month the batch export is worth about RM2,300 a month in saved staff time, or one part timer instead of one full timer.
| Build, Tier B quoted | RM26,500 |
| Contribution per job | RM19.55 |
| Jobs to break even | 1,356 |
| Reached, expected case | month 15 |
| Reached, slow case | month 22 |
| Reached, strong case | month 10 |
Cumulative contribution against the build cost, before the client's own overheads. Useful for the conversation about why Tier B rather than Tier A: the RM8,000 difference is about 410 jobs.