iPay88 reports steady increase in Retail eCommerce cross border spending over twelve (12) months since partner engagement with eNETS Singapores.
Kuala Lumpur, 12th October 2015 – iPay88 Sdn Bhd (‘iPay88’) today announces that it has been a year since its milestone partnership with eNETS – Singapore’s leading online payment gateway provider.
The partnership which has been in effect for about a year now since October 2014, was formed with the main objective of establishing an official and integrated payment system network between two of the largest online gateway brands of both countries.
Today, NETS is the most widely used e-payment option in Singapore with 1 in every 3 people using NETS every day.
iPay88 Executive Director, Chan Kok Long says, “Realizing the potential of the expanding market in Malaysia, eNETS partnered with us last year to better facilitate Singaporean consumers to purchase Malaysian items online from Singapore.”
Essentially, this iPay88–eNETS partnership has allowed Singapore Internet banking account customers from OCBC, UOB, DBS, POSB, Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank, directly debit their accounts for online purchases with Malaysian eCommerce merchants.
This new payment service gives Singaporean customers the ‘Online Banking’ option for purchase and payment, in addition to Credit Card online purchase that they have been limited to thus far. By default, only Singaporean customers who owe Malaysian bank accounts, are able to directly debit or pay from their banking accounts for their online purchases.
Chan says that over the last 12 months, iPay88 reports a steadily increasing number of eNETS -iPay88 usage for e-retailing transactions. “To be fair, the numbers are not entirely significant, however the buying pattern shows a definite upward trend – both in terms of volume, and transaction value.”
Expected Pick Up in Cross-Country Online Purchases
Chan says that with this existing partnership between eNETS and iPay88, local Malaysian eMerchants who are aiming to expand into overseas market can use this opportunity as their testing ground by targeting Singaporean consumers for their online offerings.
“Currently iPay88 is connected to close to 8,000 merchants locally in Malaysia and growing steadily. Their make up is a diversified base of Malaysian eMerchants ranging from travel, pharmaceutical, leisure, electronic products, general insurance, tour packages, clothing and many more consumer products.
In effect, this opens up a huge new market of product and services offerings for Singaporean customers who want to capitalize on their strong currency for many good value buys from Malaysian eMerchants,” explains Chan.
He adds that based on reports from Euromonitor, although Malaysia and Singapore make up only about 8 per cent of the Southeast Asia’s population; however both these countries contribute almost half or 50 per cent of the total e-retail sales in the region.
Additionally, to illustrate the strong overseas online buying pattern of both Singapore and Malaysia, Singapore’s cross-border eCommerce activities is at 55 per cent; and Malaysia’s is estimated at 40 per cent. These percentages are relatively high, comparatively with overseas eCommerce spending for Japan and Korea at just 18 per cent and at 25 per cent respectively.
“With an expected general adoption of eCommerce in this region, iPay88 believes that our strategic engagement with eNETS will see a boost as Singaporean customers become more aware of their Online Banking option to purchase the wide arrange of online retail and services offerings by Malaysian eMerchants,” he ends.