Tap to pay via the smartphone is a quick and easy way to make contactless payments. However, businesses are slow in adopting tap to phone solutions even though 55 percent of Asia Pacific consumers surveryed are willing to use this mode of payment.
Category: e-commerce
PG Mall goes multi-channel with Netcore
PG Mall is powering its multi-channel marketing automation and engagement campaigns with Netcore Smartech.
Google helps small businesses in Thailand go digital
Travel restrictions and curfews have been devastating Thailand’s 1.3 million small businesses. With international tourism far from being normalised, many are reeling from the effects of COVID-19 and struggling for survival.
Cloud Expo Asia, Hong Kong goes online
Cloud Expo Asia, Hong Kong is the latest tech event in the region to move online — another casualty of the coronavirus. The dates remain the same — September 23 and 24 — and its contents will be remain online for three weeks after the event.
Huawei unpacks enhanced live streaming solution for merchants
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
In the midst of the pandemic, e-commerce is thriving and creating opportunities for many. At a webinar for developers last week, Huawei unveiled an enhanced live streaming solution that can help merchants and e-commerce platforms tap this fast growing market, which raked in US$3.46 trillion in 2019.
Intuit acquires TradeGecko
Intuit has acquired Singapore startup TradeGecko, the inventory and order management platform that makes omni-channel commerce easy for small businesses, for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is expected to be completed in September 2020.
12CM and Line Taiwan pioneer contactless order pickup confirmation
Echoss Smart Stamp: contactless validation
Korea’s 12CM and Line Taiwan have launched Takeout, a contactless way of validating orders that are being picked up in Taiwan.
Facebook and PayPal sow into Gojek
Photo by Afif Kusuma on UnsplashFacebook and PayPal have pumped undisclosed sums into Indonesia ride-hailing firm Gojek.
Facebook and Instagram offer Shops to businesses
Set up shop on Facebook and Instagram (Photo: Facebook)Having an online shop is so important today. With people huddled at home and movement limited, online shopping has spiked, leaving those without an online presence behind.
SAP opens data centre in Singapore in e-commerce push
SAP has expanded its presence in Asia-Pacific (APAC) with the opening of a new data centre in Singapore to support SAP Commerce Cloud deployment.
Sunmi lets consumers pay with their face
Think using the smartphone is a cool way of paying? Well, that’s neat but China-based Sunmi aims to take digital payment a step further with its face-recognition payment solution.
China: Quick adopter, widespread use of technology
By Edward Lim
In the early 2000s, I visited Beijing for the first time and was amazed to see a taxi using a global positioning system (GPS) to get me to my destination. To put things in perspective, this was before the arrival of smartphones and GPS wasn’t even used in Singapore.
Amazon takes on big guns in machine learning
A new player has entered the machine learning arena. While big players such as Google, Intel and NVIDIA have been slugging it out, Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring with its newly-launched Inferentia chip.
Arcadier to raise US$25m for blockchain e-commerce marketplaces
Singapore headquartered Arcadier, has launched Token Generation Event (TGE) Presale to raise US$25 million by Q3 next year for its Project ArcadierX blockchain-enhanced marketplace platform. A private sale has yielded US$1 million in investment.
Online marketplace Honestbee launches brick-and-mortar Habitat
It’s interesting how trends keep evolving. In the past decade or two, many supermarkets have opened up online stores to cater to changing consumer demands. On the other side, new companies set up online stores to challenge these traditional players. Yesterday, one of these, Honestbee, took the reverse route by setting up Habitat, its first brick-and-mortar outlet in Pasir Panjang, Singapore.
Singapore launches unified payment QR code
The number of QR codes for payment is akin to the number of credit card offerings in the market — it keeps growing, making it more of a hassle than convenience for merchants and consumers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has stepped in to solve this problem with the launch of the Singapore Quick Response (SGQR) Code.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma walks the talk
By Edward Lim
It’s hard to let go when you’re one of the richest man in the world and leading one, if not the biggest, e-commerce company in the world. But, Jack Ma is a man of his word. A man who knows his time and a man who has shown what resilience is all about.
Outage and strike do not faze Amazon on Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day is still going strong and racking up tons of sales despite an outage that prevented some customers in North America from accessing the website and the app, and a strike by workers in Spain.
Suning Tesco opens first UAV logistics route in Wuhan
China e-commerce firm Suning Tesco has opened the first pilot route for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) logistics and transportation in Wuhan, China. Its logistics arm Suning Logistics and Ewatt Aerospace jointly developed two UAVs for this purpose.
JD.com gets US$550m cash injection from Google
China e-commerce giant JD.com has received a US$550 million investment from Google as part of a strategic partnership.
ICT spending in APAC (sans Japan) to hit US$1.5t in 2021
Information and communications technology (ICT) spending in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will hit US$1.5 trillion in 2021, according to IDC.
Google moves to top of smart speaker market in Q1
Google has ousted Amazon from the perch of the global smart speaker market. According to Canalys, Google shipped 3.2 million units with its Google Home and Google Home mini series , surpassing the 2.5 million units of the Amazon Echo series for the first time in Q1.
Cryptocurrency and Carry
Singapore-headquartered Carry is teaming up with Spoqa of South Korea to bring cryptocurrency payment and blockchain-enhanced loyalty points to brick-and-mortar retailers.
Carousell secures US$85m funding
Singapore-based Carousell has secured US$85 million in Series C funding to grow and expand its e-commerce business across the region.
Alibaba acquires Daraz to extend South Asia reach
Alibaba Group has acquired Daraz, its second purchase for a Rocket Internet company following the earlier deal for Lazada in Southeast Asia.
Singtel and Razer to unite e-payment network
Singtel and Razer have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to connect their respective e-payment systems into an interoperable network to reach out to up to 50 million users in Southeast Asia.
Amazon has more than 100m Prime subscribers
The number is staggering even if the company is Amazon. Jeff Bezos has announced that Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members globally.
VR to impact retail and marketing
Virtual reality (VR) has been tipped to be the next innovative technology to improve and impact retail and marketing.
Tantalising line-up of speakers at NVIDIA AI Conference
More than 1,000 participants attending the NVIDIA AI Conference in Singapore next week are in for a treat as the organisers are bringing in a tantalising line-up of speakers.
The two keynote speakers are Dr David B Kirk, NVIDIA Fellow and inventor of more than 60 patents and patent applications relating to graphics design; and Dr Wanli Min, AI scientist of Alibaba Cloud, who will touch on A Revolutionary Road to Data Intelligence.
Besides these two, there are special guest-of-honour Chng Kai Fong, Managing Director of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and a panel discussion on AI for the Future of Singapore Economy.
E-commerce to account for a quarter of retail sales by 2025
Greater internet and mobile device accessibility are driving e-commerce growth in Southeast Asia.
According to ABI Research, Smart Retail has gone through revolutionary changes in the past 10 years and will exponentially continue to do so going forward. Brick and mortar stores are no longer the only option for consumers across the globe to make their everyday purchases, due to significant advancements in technology, both in-store and online.
Key players include Senion, who implements some of the world’s largest Indoor Positioning System (IPS) solutions to enhance in-store experiences, and AisleLabs who provides shopper traffic behavior analytics to help retailers optimise store layouts. Leading POS software vendors, Shopkeep and Square are allowing retailers to sell across multi-channels from a single platform. These and other key vendors are paving paths to making the offline and online worlds seamless experiences.
