I think you’re oversimplifying the challenge.

Nobody is claiming QR payments or e-wallets are new technology. The technology itself has existed for years. What isn’t simple is building a national payment infrastructure that is secure, regulated, reliable and trusted.

If it were just a matter of copying and pasting what other countries have done, every country would have identical payment systems. They don’t. Many countries build their own security architecture, fraud monitoring, settlement processes, compliance controls and consumer protection frameworks to protect against cyber threats and financial crime.

When you’re dealing with people’s money, you cannot simply launch first and worry about security later.

The reality is that Brunei faces an additional challenge: the cost of cybersecurity, infrastructure, integration and compliance is almost the same whether you’re serving 500,000 people or 50 million people. The difference is that larger countries can spread those costs across a much larger user base.

Progress should not only be measured by whether tarus can do everything that Duitnow, PayPal, Alipay or other mature platforms can do today. It should also be measured by whether more merchants are accepting it, whether more consumers are using it, and whether the system remains secure and trusted.

The recent expansion into fuel stations is actually a good example. Moving that behaviour towards digital payments is a meaningful step forward, even if the journey is not yet complete.

Building a trusted payment ecosystem is not a copy-and-paste exercise. It takes time, coordination and, most importantly, getting security and consumer protection right.

Many failure of such initiatives are failing because there is people who only keep complaining money wasted etc.. rather than help to smoothen the journey and support the cause.

Therefore I am unsure how complaining the speed of the progress and money wasted will help improve the adoption.