Paytm leads the market
Forty-nine per cent of Indian respondents “make online purchases daily”, the highest among leading Asia Pacific countries, according to a survey of 3,500 consumers by Rapyd, a global Fintech as a Service company
The research, conducted in March-April 2020, concluded that 85% of Indian respondents used Paytm in the month before the survey.
With the growth of India’s UPI payment scheme, eWallets (including Paytm, Google Pay, Amazon Pay) are preferred by 51.2% of users and bank transfers by 11.9%, said the 2020 Asia Pacific eCommerce and Payment Study released on 11 June 2020.
Debit and credit cards together are preceded by 28% of respondents, said the which studied the financial habits, payment methods, considerations, and preferences of consumers in seven Asia Pacific countries, uncovering how consumer buying expectations and behaviours are evolving in an increasingly digital world.
The research covered500 respondents per country in India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.
The results highlight a quick rise of new payment technologies that have emerged in recent years and gained rapid adoption and popularity by offering a convenient payment experience, adapting to the local context, and providing access to digital payments for traditionally underbanked communities.
The study helps businesses gain insights into consumer buying habits and payment diversity in Asia, helping eCommerce and mCommerce businesses increase their addressable audience and include new customer segments into the Internet economy by adopting the most relevant digital payment options, as buyers go increasingly cashless during the current health crisis, said Rapyd.
E-commerce and mobile-commerce in the seven countries is worth some US$355 billion, as presented in the study. Southeast Asia’s internet economy hit US$100 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to US$300 billion by 2025.
Rapyd Vice President for Asia Pacific Joel Yarbrough underlined “Since the beginning of the global pandemic, going digital is no longer optional.
Yarbrough said “eCommerce is now the new baseline. All over Asia, we see stratospheric growth in digital payment methods, with local patterns and local winners in every country.”
While cards and card-powered mobile wallets are dominant in Japan (61%) and Taiwan (51%), across markets, there is a dramatic uptake of eWallets and bank transfers as preferred ways to pay.
Taken together, eWallets and bank transfers represent the emerging wave of payments, particularly where they are enhanced by interoperable Real-Time Payment (RTP) systems like India with UPI (64%) and Thailand with PromptPay (62%).
Even in a card-preferring market like Singapore, together eWallets and bank transfers, including PayNow, are preferred by 42% of respondents, swinging all the way to 78% in Indonesia.
Rapyd has built the world’s largest local payments network to power frictionless global commerce with offices in California, London and Singapore. fiinews.com
