Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M) 3.0 will be directly credited into the bank accounts of the recipients on Feb 22.

In his Facebook page, Najib said BR1M payment will be made in stages to applicants who did not have a bank account or are yet to update their banking details.

Registration of new BR1M applicants closed on Jan 31.

Existing recipients only need to update their personal details like address, information on their family members and bank account details.

At the tabling of the 2014 Budget last year, Najib had announced that households with monthly income of RM3,000 and below will be eligible to receive BR1M payment of RM650 while those who are still single and earn below RM2,000 will receive aid of RM300.

When the programme first began, households earning RM3,000 and less a month received RM500 while single unmarried persons aged 21 and above and earning not more than RM2,000 a month received RM250.

For the BR1M 3.0, the government had allocated a total amount of RM4.6 billion, which will benefit some 7.9 million Malaysians.

BR1M is the brainchild of Najib, who announced it in his 2012 Budget speech. He believed that the one-off cash handout would help the low-income group deal with inflation.