KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 ― An apparent physical retail slump may simply be due to consumers switching to online shopping, with data from iPay88 showing a 161 per cent rise in its online transactions from 2015 to last year.
The online payment service provider said its Malaysians' Online Buying Patterns study showed that it processed 38.2 million transactions last year.
In 2015, this was just 14.6 million transactions.
“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’,” iPay88 executive director Lim Kok Hing said in a statement.
“However, iPay88’s payment system shows otherwise as eCommerce and online purchases went up by 210 per cent over the same comparable period.”
Lim attributed the spike in online transactions to the growing availability of Internet shopping services as well as developments in mobile technology.
Malaysians are among the most avid mobile technology consumers in the world, with an estimated 17.8 million people in the country expected to be smartphone users by the end of 2017.
The country has also experienced an explosion in online shopping services, ranging from regional ones such as Lazada to homegrown services like Lelong and Mudah.
“Online shoppers do not just shop when they are desktop-bound, but using mobile phone is just as easy,” Lim said.
Other information gleaned from the study of iPay88 data is that the most popular online purchases were for games, general ticketing, fashion and apparel.
Employers might not be pleased to learn that the first of two daily peak periods for online shopping in Malaysia is between 11am and 3pm. A second peak takes place from 7pm to 11pm.
iPay88's data coincided with a study announced by global payment provider Visa yesterday, which found that three in four Malaysians now preferred electronic payments to cash.
Visa also cited the growing adoption of mobile technology as among the contributors to this shift.
