FYST, the payments consultancy for e-commerce businesses, has released the second instalment of its new three-part report, ‘The Map of World Payments’, which drills deep into e-commerce payment trends across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
The proprietary data presented in the new FYST report, which has been gathered across 12 countries including Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, exposes how real-time payments are transforming the e-commerce industry in APAC.
Following on from the first chapter of the company’s report, which drew attention to the Middle East and Africa, this second instalment on the APAC region underlines the dominance of digital wallets like WeChat Pay, Alipay and Grab in local e-commerce trends.
In this, digital wallets are found to represent nearly 70 per cent of e-commerce transaction value across the region as a whole, and growth rates suggest no sign of slowing down.
With an agenda to inspire regional merchants to tap into more revenue opportunities by offering locally-used payment methods, FYST’s report outlines which payment methods and card types are used in each country.
But crucially, the report also details other locally-used payment methods in each profiled country, giving merchants valuable insights that they can use to optimise their online checkouts, reduce cart abandonment rates, and boost sales.
On this matter, the data confirms that:
- In mature markets like New Zealand, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services are set to comprise around 17 per cent of e-commerce expenditure by 2025.
- The introduction of real-time payment infrastructure is a game-changer in markets like Indonesia and the Philippines and is set to spur the usage of account-to-account (A2A) transfers for e-commerce transactions.
- In nascent e-commerce markets such as Bangladesh, cash-on-delivery comprises around 90 per cent of online transactions, but internet and mobile infrastructure improvements will see their share decline in favour of mobile payment options.
FYST meets demand for holistic payment experiences
With the value of cross-border payments anticipated to hit $250trillion by 2027, the launch of FYST’s report is timely, as e-commerce businesses move beyond merely offering digital payment capabilities to seek full 360-degree advice and support. Additionally, its first-hand market insights help businesses unlock new opportunities in the fast-evolving e-commerce space.
FYST consolidates payment and fintech innovators under one brand, combining technical ingenuity and in-depth tailored advice to help fledgling businesses to scale up successfully.
The evolution of the APAC payments landscape
Ryta Zasiekina, CEO of FYST, comments: “The APAC region is known as the birthplace of the digital wallet, and it’s become the dominant payment method for e-commerce across the continent, helped by the surging popularity of China’s WeChat Pay and Alipay.
“Given their popularity in the APAC region and across the world, it’s simply not an option for merchants to ignore these two digital wallet giants, regardless of wherever they are located,” continues Zasiekina
“But other forces are now emerging to reshape the APAC payments landscape. In such an incredibly diverse region, with vastly differing payment habits in each market, we’re seeing how infrastructure improvements like the introduction of real-time and instant payment systems are helping to promote financial inclusion, which in turn generates economic growth.
“Given that bank transfers and account-to-account payments tend to be lower in cost than card payments, it will be interesting to revisit our data in the future to see just how big of a bite has been taken out of card volumes.”
“These market-specific nuances detailed in FYST’s ‘Map of World Payments’ report will provide merchants with the valuable insights they need to tailor their online checkouts with locally used payment methods, empowering them to capture and convert more transactions and reduce cart abandonment rates. That’s our mission at FYST, to guide merchants at every step of their journey into global e-commerce with levels of personalised support unmatched in the market,” she concludes.
Image and article originally from thefintechtimes.com. Read the original article here.