The advent of the Internet brought with it the opportunity to do business beyond the scope of its physical boundaries. A proper implementation of an e-commerce page will enable companies to expand their client range to an international level. It is with implementations that companies such as Amazon and eBay has started and become multi-million dollar businesses. Today, it is not uncommon to have boutique shops prioritizing their expansion into the World Wide Web as oppose to simply opening a new physical boutique. However, the e-commerce equation takes for granted, one element, which many Malaysia feel uneasy about: the process of paying online.
The process of online payment usually takes the form or using credit cards or an electronic wallet of an individual’s bank account, like PayPal. Banks in Malaysia currently do not offer its account holders connectivity to PayPal and the closest of its kind is the Maybank2U account, which is not accepted world wide. This leaves the only efficient payment option as credit cards. A number of websites that attempted to use ecommerce in Malaysia had a money postal order concept or an upfront deposit of cash into certain bank accounts which is technologically inefficient. As an analysis, I do believe the fear in the use credit cards online is mostly due to the rampant fraud cases prominent during the late 90s. Though many measures are now implemented to improve credit card authentication and reduce fraud, the fear of its use remains and takes its toll on the full potential of e-commerce in Malaysia. This perhaps partially explains the limited success of websites such as eBay Malaysia and Lelong.com.my.
A remedy to the problem, I believe, would be to introduce the use of electronic wallets; a bank card which automatically doubles as a debit card and accepted nationwide (an EFTPOS implementation) or the introduction of an internationally accepted debit card by a major card issuer company, such as the VISA Debit Card, as available in many developed countries.
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4 comments:
Very interesting article, what about Cari: http://www.cari.net.my/OnlinePaymentSystem.html ?
Do you think they are useful as an online payment system? Quite expensive fixed rate (5.5%) though. :(
I am not sure if accepted internationally though, but it works like paypal.
interesting. we have a few international debit cards issued in malaysia including alrajhi bank's visa debit card. i agree, compared to australia or other european countries, malaysia lags far in terms of debit card acceptance among merchants. very few hypermarkets accept the EFTPOS here in kl.
Yes Aiman, to be honest, I am one of the people that fear to use online payment simply because of the security issue during the transaction nowadays!
However, its a good idea to use and apply debit card compared to credit card, unless we have a good experienced and fully trusted with any of the well established company as u mentioned.
Malaysians like to hold stuff before buying.
Credit card is a not much of an issue for us. Fraud is.
Postage cost is expensive
Courier company does not Handle With Care.
Ecommerce inter-relate with global warming due to logistics.
Malaysians have trust issues.
Malaysian credit card does not protect their client. Instead harass them with high interest and do not tolerate with late payment.
I think I've said enough.
- NoktahHitam.com
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