By ETV Team
In its latest sharing of its strategic expansion plans, Malaysian payment gateway provider iPay88-NTT is setting its eyes on Asia, moving up from its ‘dominance’ in the ASEAN market.
Co-Founder and Executive Director Chan Kok Long shares that 2017 is the year that the company sets up its office in Bangladesh, with the hope of capitalizing on the middle-class to upper-class market within the capital city of Dakar.
“We hope to start making profit from Bangladesh, hopefully in less than 3 years. To be honest, iPay88 has been in Indonesia for 4 years now and we not yet profitable; but this is how the business of payment gateway solutioning is – we have to invest first and this is what we are doing.”
“The e-commerce industry in Bangladesh, like other developing countries, has a ‘latecomer advantage. Currently the sector is facing challenges such as delivery channels for its customers, affordability, erratic internet connections and online fraudulence. We believe, in no time will be the next major driver of economic development in Bangladesh.”
The other market that iPay88 is hoping to get inroads into is Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states that cover The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.
“For GCC and (later) EMEA markets, iPay88 sets its eyes on making Qatar our main platform to move into these markets,” says Chan, who discounts the recent Qatar-Gulf political crisis any big deterrent into what he thinks is a good choice – based on his observation of Qatar’s ‘very advanced and developed metropolitan’ state.
Since its inception in 2006, iPay88’s payment gateway systems support over 70% of all e-commerce businesses in Malaysia. To date, iPay88 has set footprints in almost all Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Singapore.
iPay88’s first international footprint was set in Indonesia in 2006, followed by the Philippines in 2014.
“Today we are No.1 in Phillipines, and among the Top.5 in Indonesia. Our growth in Indonesia and the Philippines will eventually outrank Malaysia in terms of numbers of transactions and sales volumes as these countries have a larger population number and growing appetite for e-commerce.”
“We are looking at a local:international revenue ratio of 80:20 by the end of 2018,” says Chan. iPay88’s H12017 revenues are contributed mainly by Malaysia.
While Malaysia still leads in terms of revenue growth, in terms of sales volume, we are seeing a 34 percent growth in Indonesia for H12017 (as compared to the same period in 2016). Number of transactions in Indonesia also grew by 97 percent in the same period.
