In terms of emerging markets, Southeast Asia has often been mentioned as a new market of interest, alongside Poland, Turkey and India. Unsurprisingly, Vietnam was considered as one of the toughest markets to enter due to the language barrier and a strong local payment method.
Cross-border ecommerce and conquering new markets are two methods that merchants have at hand to increase their business volume. The advice we give to our merchants and partners is to engage with a processor who has a global presence, who knows the local laws and interchange fees, the pricing and the decisions that a merchant should make based on the regulation of that particular market. A first step forward would be to find partners or advisors or outsourced contractors who have the best overall view on ecommerce. This includes insight on how that market works, who are the right partners, what are the real opportunities, how people pay and other influencing factors on success and failure in that particular market.
“If merchants try to accomplish a global sales strategy without a localized optimization strategy they will have inefficiencies in their systems and will likely pay higher costs. Whether it’s adopting local technology or an acquiring partner, you need support to build and implement a market-entry strategy.” says Eng Sheng Guan, MOLPay’s Chief Executive Officer.
He then added on, “this marketplace is evolving. Merchants are expanding their e-commerce presence rapidly, seeking to sell their products to new customer bases in different currencies, and benefitting from the opportunities offered by cross-border ecommerce. Merchants working with a reliable, experienced international ecommerce processor can avoid many of the pitfalls that may arise. Because the international ecommerce landscape is changing as it expands, mobile payments continue to evolve and trust has become an item of great importance to the merchants. They need to engage with processors they can rely on as advisors and reliable partners, who can guide them in their international expansion process.”
According to The Telegraph, cybercrime has become the most profitable criminal activity in the world. So merchants have to ensure they have an environment that will support EMV (a global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology), encryption and tokenization when expanding their business into new markets. Becoming PCI compliant and maintaining this compliance as a permanent business-as-usual process is also mandatory. PCI is the baseline to stop data breaches and it is the responsibility of all parties involved – acquirer, issuer, and merchant.
To provide a secure and a hassle free payment solution in Southeast Asia, MOLPay Sdn. Bhd., a subsidiary of MOL AccessPortal Sdn. Bhd., which is the operating company of MOL Global, Inc. (OTCMKTS: MOLGY) (“MOL” or the “Company”) has collaborated with Vietnam’s Top 1 online payment gateway VTC Pay with more than 1 million users in Vietnam. It is among a few Vietnamese service providers that have received Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) as well as the license to provide Intermediate payment service issued by the State Bank.
To conclude, merchants who wants to expand globally have to understand market disruptors; for this, most merchants should ask themselves how to become progressive and bring value to business. Partnering with global processors who have local knowledge and who understand the market ecommerce specifics will save them time and money. So, all in all, merchants should figure out the possible solutions to stay ahead of the crowd and prepare today for what nobody knows is coming tomorrow, within different markets across the globe.
