Mobile commerce is expected to lead the growth of online payments adoption in Malaysia.

According to iPay88, the leading online payment service provider in South East Asia, Malaysia’s m-commerce market will lead the growth of online payments adoption through mobile shopping. The executive director of iPay88 Chan Kok Long said that mobile commerce is now the hot trend to watch and that based on the ratio of the company’s mobile traffic – including its total online payment transactions – digital payment transactions make up nearly 70 percent of the Malaysian market, reported Marketing Interactive.

The mobile commerce trend is expected to rise as the number of mobile device users increases.

Last year, iPay88 recorded that 3.7 million online shoppers who made purchases via its systems used a mobile device. Back in 2014, this number was only 2.0 million, clearly revealing that the growth of mobile shopping in the country is accelerating at a huge speed. So far, this year, iPay88 has reported that in the first quarter 1.6 million shoppers have already made purchase via mobile.

With the number of mobile users increasing in Malaysia, the m-commerce trend is forecasted to increase. In 2015, mobile penetration reached 136 percent with 47 percent of Malaysians using their mobile phones to shop online.

Additionally, iPay88 has also noticed an increase in the number of merchants actively promoting mobile purchases this year. The company also noted that the percentage of mobile traffic has risen significantly from 27 percent in 2014 to 38.4 percent in 2015 to 48.6 percent in 2016 so far.

Malaysia’s m-commerce market ranks third in terms of mobile shopping growth rate in Asia.

This statistic comes from a mobile shopping survey conducted last year, which revealed the country’s mobile shopping growth rate to be over 20 percent from 25.4 percent in 2012 to 45.6 percent in 2014.

Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Walmart and several other popular international online stores have recorded a growing number of consumers making purchases via mobile. However this doesn’t come as a surprise.

“No doubt the availability of cheap smart phones and laptops have made the Internet accessible to a whole new demographic. The advent of tablets and smart watches has also broadened the spectrum of Internet usage,” said iPay88’s executive director Chan Kok Long.

In terms of the m-commerce market in Malaysia, ticketing accounts for 35 percent of purchases made via smartphones, while marketplace/group buying makes up 29 percent. However, when it comes to airline tickets, these items are mostly purchased via tablets.

The world’s largest furniture retailer is trying out a new QR code pilot program.

IKEA is well known for being an innovative and forward-thinking company and its new quick response codes (QR codes) mobile checkout system, which it is currently piloting in France, is no exception. If all goes according to plan, the new system will make it much easier and faster for customers to checkout at physical stores.

Customers can use their smartphone cameras to help improve their shopping experience in-store.

The new system merges online shopping with brick-and-mortar shopping by requiring customers to use their smartphones while shopping in the store and at checkout.

How it works is quite simple. Using an IKEA app, customers scan the items they intend to purchase from the store with their mobile phone and place the items in their cart as they shop. Once they reach the checkout point, the app combines all the items they’ve scanned to obtain the total purchase. From there it generates a QR code. This unique quick response code is scanned at checkout, so the customer can pay for their purchase with quick ease.

With only one scan required, quick response codes make the checkout process at IKEA a breeze.

Such a system is highly convenient for a store like IKEA where it is not uncommon for customers to purchase several large items that can be awkward to scan individually at checkout. This is especially the case if the barcode of a large and heavy item that needs to be scanned has been placed upside down in the cart. The new mobile checkout system eliminates this hassle.

IKEA’s global head of mobile solutions, Victor Bayata, said that what IKEA is looking at is “giving the customer the power to decide what to do and where to take the next step.” Bayata added that “What we need to do, and this is again the formula that everyone tries and tests, is that we need to understand our customers’ needs and wants.”

He explained that understanding how to combine the online experience with how people act in the store is how the company will provide their customers with “services that make sense.”

If the pilot project proves successful in France, the quick response codes checkout feature at IKEA is likely to be tried at other store locations and could make shopping in physical stores more attractive to customers, improving their overall in-store shopping experience.