What the KPKT licensed money lender register is
Under the Moneylenders Act 1951 every person or business carrying on the business of moneylending in Malaysia is required to hold a current licence issued by the Registrar of Moneylenders, an office within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT). The register — the public list of every entity holding a current licence — is what the phrase "list of licensed money lender in Malaysia" refers to. KPKT publishes and maintains the register itself; there is no BNM (Bank Negara Malaysia) equivalent list, because moneylenders are not licensed by BNM, they are licensed by KPKT (this is the specific confusion the "licensed by Bank Negara" phrase in some loan ads exploits — covered in our blog post "Licensed by Bank Negara" in loan ads).
How to check the KPKT licensed money lender list online — step by step
The official online lookups are i-KrediKom (the KPKT credit-community system, which is the operational surface most consumers land on) and the KPKT Money Lending Division section on kpkt.gov.my (Bahagian Pinjaman Wang). Both surface the same underlying register.
The procedure is: (1) note the moneylender's licence number, registered company name and licensed premise address exactly as the lender presents them to you (they are required to display these); (2) look the licence number up on i-KrediKom, then again on the kpkt.gov.my portal — a legitimately licensed lender's three fields match on both surfaces; (3) confirm the licensed premise address matches the physical office you're dealing with, because a valid licence is issued against a specific premise; (4) check whether the specific advertisement the lender is running carries the separately-required Registrar of Moneylenders advertisement permit under section 11(1) of the Moneylenders Act 1951 — the ad-permit and the moneylending-licence are two distinct authorisations, and legitimate lenders carry both.
Red flags of an unlicensed moneylender (Ah Long) in Malaysia
Unlicensed moneylenders — "Ah Long" in the Malaysian vernacular — imitate the surface signals of licensed operators to escape the verification described above. Common patterns: (a) a licence number is displayed but does not resolve on i-KrediKom or kpkt.gov.my; (b) the displayed licence number resolves but to a different registered company or licensed premise address than the entity you're dealing with; (c) no licensed premise address is displayed at all, only a mobile number and a WhatsApp contact; (d) the ad claims "licensed by Bank Negara Malaysia" — BNM does not license moneylenders, so this specific phrase is itself a signal; (e) the ad implies "no CCRIS check" or "no credit report needed" — under section 12 of the Moneylenders Act, restrictions on banking implication and specific representation classes apply to licensed advertising, and legitimate licensed lenders do not fall back on those framings.
Google Financial Services Verification (FSV) — the advertising layer
Independent of the KPKT licence itself, any moneylender advertising loan services on Google (Search, Display or YouTube) targeting Malaysia is required by Google's own Financial Services Verification (FSV) programme to complete a verification step that names the underlying KPKT licence. Google's FSV requirement is not a substitute for a KPKT licence — it is an additional gate a licensed moneylender still has to pass before the ad can serve. A Facebook / Meta ad ecosystem carries analogous restrictions on financial-services advertising; both platforms treat unverified financial ads as disapproved.
For a lender, the practical implication is that a Google Ads campaign for loan products in Malaysia cannot run at all without the KPKT licence documentation completed inside FSV. For a consumer, a live Google Ad promoting a moneylending service is a marginal (not sufficient) positive signal — it means the advertiser has completed FSV, which requires naming a KPKT licence, but it does not confirm that specific advertisement is compliant with the Registrar's section 11(1) advertisement-permit rules on its face copy.
Bahasa Malaysia edition
A Bahasa Malaysia edition of this guide is in preparation for future publication under editorial review; the staged scaffold sits at semak pinjaman berlesen KPKT under a noindex directive pending a BM reviewer's sign-off, so that Bahasa Malaysia guidance published on shakalakaa carries the same editorial accountability as the English editions.
For licensed moneylenders reading this: the compliance angle
The specific advertising restrictions a licensed Malaysian moneylender operates under — the section 11(1) advertisement permit, the section 12 banking-implication restriction, the section 5(1) unlicensed-advertising offence that this page's verification steps guard against on the consumer side — are covered in our licensed moneylender compliance page. Model ad copy against the Registrar's rules with the free loan ad compliance checker before campaign launch. For the marketing side of the same industry (channel mix, cost benchmarks, WhatsApp lead handling under PDPA), see our loan marketing hub.