Category: Tablet Commerce

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.

Airlines see a mere 13% of volume on mobile devices according to new report.

A recent report from Netherlands-based global multichannel payment company Adyen revealed that travel made up 15.5% of mobile transactions on its global payments network in Q1 2016. While m-payments made up 32% of overall online payments in this year’s first quarter, in the travel sector, the share plummets to 15%. According to Adyen, these findings show that there is opportunity to extend the reach of smartphones and tablets in the travel industry.

Compared to other industries, the travel sector sees significantly fewer mobile transactions.

The report – Mobile Payments Index 2016: Travel Edition – shows that while accommodation services see 17% of volume on mobile devices, airlines see only 13%. Also, tablets are the preferred choice among mobile devices when it comes to booking in the travel industry.

President of North America at Adyen, Kamran Zaki, stated that the travel sector is seeing notably fewer browser-based payments happen on mobile compared to other industries. Zaki added that “an average of only 15 percent of online payments take place on a mobile device, compared to over 30 percent across all verticals” among airline and accommodation merchants on the Adyen platform.

However, airlines investing in mobile offerings are seeing higher m-payments activity.

Even though only 13% of transactions for airlines are occurring on mobile, Adyen’s report also pointed out that the airlines investing in their mobile offerings are actually seeing higher than average activity in regard to mobile payments.

For instance, European airline Transavia has a share of mobile payments that is 65% higher than the average.

Adyen CCO Roelant Prins said “We are moving to a future where many loyal travel industry customers will make their entire journey in-app, from initial booking to final checkout, with payments as a key step in that journey.” He added that aside from in-app, travel merchants who invest in optimized experiences for web browsers across key types of devices are already seeing a significant increase in their mobile transaction volume.

Adyen believes that the travel industry has more opportunity to take a larger share of m-payments by branching into other mobile services like smartphone check-in among other convenient customer services.