Malaysian ecommerce gets boost with Paypal now accepted at local eBay marketplace
A Malaysian satay hawker
In Australia, online transactions from Malaysia are still black-listed by many payment gateway providers because of historically high levels of fraud.
But there is little doubt that within Malaysia, ecommerce and online shopping are both growing rapidly, albeit from a small base.
Major international ecommerce players are starting to take note.
Last month, for example, eBay announced that PayPal payments in local currency (Ringgit) would be accepted on its local online marketplace at www.ebay.com.my
Google too is taking an increasing interest in the Malaysian market, and reportedly claims some 30,000 Malaysian web sites now in its content network.
The country also boasts a relatively high (i.e for SE Asia) level of Internet use, with a claimed 66% penetration rate.
Broadband take-up is somewhat lower however, with perhaps 35% penetration.
Even so, 3G mobile wireless access is relatively cheap and widely available. (Leading providers such as Celcom or Digimax sell unlimited data access for under RM 100 a month, and will throw in a free USB modem on any plan.)
Of course, ecommerce is more complicated than just setting up a website, with online payment perhaps the biggest hurdle.
And it seems clear that, whilst the web is increasingly popular, and many small businesses are venturing onto the web, relatively few are ecommerce enabled, or able to accept online payments.
iPay88.com, for example, claims to be the country’s leading online payments provider for Business to Consumer (B2C) merchants, with around 2000 users.
Whether that is true or not is hard to judge, but it is interesting and perhaps significant that the company appears to be a subsidiary of a mobile phone technology developer.
Mobile phone penetration is clearly very high, and their use ubiquitous (riding a motorcycle one-handed whilst the other is used for texting, for example, is not an altogether uncommon sight).
The government linked organization, Malaysian Electronic Payment System (MEPS), which provides ATM switching for the nations banks, also offers an online payment gateway service.
It is called FPX but appears to be essentially an Internet banking overlay, rather than a fully-fledged gateway, so that only local Internet banking account holders would be able to use it.
Moreover not all local banks appear to be participating.
(For more information go to www.meps.com.my)
Nevertheless, leading web-site building software providers, such as netbuilder.com.my appear to list a number of different online payment providers and services.
And momentum is clearly building.
Over at the official Malaysian domain name registry (www.domainregistry.my) the total number of local domain names registered has now hit the 100,000 mark, with more than 70% of them in the commercial, com.my registry.
However another 20% or more are registered directly at the top level, including the domain registrar itself.
Of course, an unknown but clearly significant number of Malaysian web-sites and domain name licensees prefer the global dot.com domain for the Internet ID.
At a guess, and judging from billboards and general display advertising there would be at least as many Malaysian dot.com sites as those registered with the local country code.
Online advertising in Malaysia is nonetheless still in its infancy.
A recent report here suggested that the online channel attracted only around 1% of the total annual ad spend of RM6.6billion last year.
In other areas, such as online recruitment, there is clearly more happening.
Jobstreet is the leading player in this area and claims an 85% market share with 17,000 jobs listed each month on its site.
The company this week reported healthy and growing profits. Net profit was said to have come in at RM26.8million for the financial year ended December 31 2009, on revenues of RM92.3million.
Profit for the first quarter of 2010 was RM8.7million, compared with RM5.6million in the same quarter last year.
JobStreet CEO Mark Chan reportedly said the company had recently acquired a stake in a Taiwanese online job site called ‘104 corporation’ and had also won a contract with the Singapore government to handle its online recruitment classifieds.
Another sector with clearly significant potential is online gaming.
As we reported last week, the Malaysian government recently announced a license for sports betting, both over the phone and online, has been granted to the local company – Ascot corporation.
The decision has prompted something of an outcry from religious and other groups, and seems certain to be opposed in at least some of the Malaysian states.
Even so, the decision arguably acknowledges the reality that sports betting is already a huge underground business activity.
Indeed one estimate for the profits of underground bookies during the last Soccer world cup back in 2006 was some RM1 million.
Deputy Home Minister, Datuk Lee Chee Leong, was reported as having told the parliament this week that police would be cracking-down on syndicates running online casino’s and online sports betting during the World Cup.
He reportedly said that police had conducted 21,985 raids on online gaming syndicates between 2008 and April this year, and that the raids had resulted in the seizure of some 112,276 computers and the arrest of some 15,106 syndicate members.
For more information go to
No comments:
Post a Comment