iPay88 Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian-based leading provider of online payment service solution in Asia, today shares some of its findings on Malaysian’s Online Buying Patterns – derived from real statistics of iPay88 payment gateway systems, that currently represents over 70 per cent of the nation’s entire e-commerce market.
In 2016, iPay88 recorded 38.2 million online transactions via its payment gateway systems, which is a substantial increase of 161 per cent (from 14.6 million in 2015).
According to Executive Director of iPay88, Lim Kok Hing, despite the perceived sluggish overall economy, there is solid evidence that Malaysians are buying online more than ever.
“Over the review period, we would have thought that consumers are tightening their belts due to a squeeze in their disposable income in view of the current economic ‘winter’. However, iPay88’s payment system shows otherwise as eCommerce and online purchases went up by 210 per cent over the same comparable period”.
Lim attributes this as a functional motive that is directly related to the convenience of shopping online as well as the ability to get better deals online.
“Online shoppers do not just shop when they are desktop-bound but using mobile phone is just as easy. Apart from that, another factor that would encourage online shopping when government starts to implement the abolishment of tariffs imposed on items being shipped into the country that are priced over RM500.”
Based on iPay88’s online payment and transactional data, Malaysian consumerism trends in the first quarter of the 2017 are as follows:
- No waning of interest in online purchases despite sluggish economy.
- Spending trends at MarketPlaces have not slowed down but instead there was a volume growth of 293 per cent. MarketPlaces shoppers are more likely to purchase online games, general ticketing, fashion and apparel.
- People are spending more online while the type of goods purchased online remains unchanged.
- Amongst the popular purchases include apparel & footwear; accessories & jewellery; electronics and sports equipment and respectively, their volumes recorded were RM25.3 million; 1.7 million; RM5.1 million and RM3.3 million.
Lim says, “It is indeed good to know that overall consumer confidence is not decreasing.
Based on our findings, the spending appetite of the online shoppers remains positive and that issues like data security and fraud have become negligible.”
iPay88 notes an interesting trend that spikes in online shopping actually happen during weekdays (Mon- Fri) with the two daily peak hours at: –
- 11am-3pm
- 7pm-11pm.
Meanwhile, the popular days are the later part of the week’s working days of Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
However, this trend decreases over the weekend; possibly due to the lifestyle fact that Malaysians tend to go offline on Saturday and Sunday, iPay88 said.