A short briefing paper on e-Payments and e-Commerce in Asia Pacific, that was used for our Roundtable event on July 2014: APEC-TRPC Forum: Asia Pacific Payments and e-Commerce
Introduction
“B2C e-commerce sales in Asia-Pacific grew more than 33% to USD332.46 billion in 2012. This year, the region will see sales increase by more than 30% to over USD433 billion—or more than one-third of all global B2C e-commerce sales.” (eMarketer, February,2013[1])
Global cross-border B2C e-commerce sales have exceeded USD1 trillion for the first time according to estimates from eMarteter,[2] and Asia Pacific was due to surpass North America by end-2013 to become the world’s No. 1 market for B2C ecommerce sales.
East Asia, namely Greater-China, Japan and South Korea, dominates Asia’s e-commerce markets. In South-East Asia, nearly 50% of e-commerce is generated by Singapore and Malaysia, despite accounting for 8% of the region’s population. 55% of Singapore’s e-commerce and 40% of Malaysia’s e-commerce is cross-border.[3] The following graphic illustrates the focus and the growth of cross-border payments from Singapore to Asia using PayPal.[4]
