Retail News CRM

Category: E-Tailing

Retail News Asia is committed to providing both local and global retailers with the latest E-Commerce & Etail news throughout the Asian market. This on a daily base.

  • Alibaba to focus on China’s biggest cities

    Alibaba to focus on China’s biggest cities

    Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang has laid out the eCommerce giant’s strategic direction for 2016, saying Alibaba will be looking to grow its already large operations in China’s biggest cities.

    That change of focus follows a year in which it made global expansion and greater penetration of China’s underserved rural markets priorities during 2015.

    “We are going to consolidate and expand our current market, particularly by enhancing reputation, optimising user experience and increasing our market share in first-tier cities,” Zhang told employees at the company’s campus in Hangzhou.

    Although he provided few details, this refocusing on the country’s wealthy mega-cities was foreshadowed in September when Alibaba announced it would add China’s capital, Beijing, as a second headquarters.

    The company has been bolstering its Beijing operations in areas such as the online sale of groceries and consumer electronics, and plans to use the city as a gateway to better serve some 400 million people in northern China, where penetration and support infrastructure is less developed than it is in the country’s southeastern provinces.

    Outlining a three-prong expansion strategy that he stopped short of calling “Alibaba everywhere,” Zhang said in addition to targeting first-tier Chinese cities, the company in 2016 would continue to promote eCommerce among rural Chinese residents and globally through its international eCommerce websites.

    “Global import, rural eCommerce, and top-tier cities are the three key battlefields for Alibaba in 2016,” he said.

    Zhang last year said the globalisation of Alibaba’s mostly Chinese operations was a top priority. The company hired former top Goldman Sachs executive Michael Evans to oversee international expansion, boosted its presence in Europe and made cross-border online shopping a highlight of its annual 11.11 Shopping Festival.

    This year, Zhang said, the company will continue to build up channels that allow international brands and merchants to sell online to Chinese consumers.

    The focus of this effort will be Alibaba’s Tmall Global, a cross-border shopping solution that provides Western merchants with a simplified channel for selling online in China, and g.taobao.com, a niche channel within the company’s giant Taobao Marketplace that helps consumers discover quality products sourced from around the world.

    “We are going to build our businesses around the two brands, in order to raise their awareness among customers and offer optimal user experience,” Zhang said.

    Meanwhile, the company plans to invest in operations that not only allow to retailers tap the growing purchasing power of rural Chinese consumers, but also in platforms that help farmers in the hinterlands sell and deliver agricultural products to online shoppers in the country’s big cities.

    “In 2016, we are going to ramp up our efforts to bring quality goods to rural buyers, and deliver local produce to urban customers,” Zhang said, “so the rural market can be connected to the whole country and even the whole world.”

    Alibaba has built more than 10,000 village-level service centers that promote eCommerce and provide delivery services in more than 20 provinces.

    Zhang added that Alibaba this year would continue to drive innovation in omnichannel retailing and build up its on-demand services offerings.

  • MasterCard to take payments by wearable devices

    MasterCard to take payments by wearable devices

    MasterCard and secure payments company Coin have teamed up to make the credit card available for buying a wide range of fitness bands, smartwatches and other wearable devices.

    This collaboration builds upon the MasterCard announcement in October of its Commerce for Every Device program, aimed at enabling any consumer gadget, accessory or wearable to become a payment device.

    Atlas Wearables, which designs advanced fitness trackers, Moov, a personal fitness coach on your wrist, and smartwatch manufacturer Omate are the first set of companies working with MasterCard and Coin to include payment technology in their products.

    “We are adding payment functionality to items that consumers are already using – fitness bands, jewellery, clothing, watches,” says MasterCard’s senior vice-president for digital payments, Sherri Haymond.

    “This makes the products more useful for consumers and enhances the value device manufacturers can deliver to their customers. Coin complements that approach and enables us to reach an expanded set of device partners.”

    Coin will provide hardware and software technology for embedding MasterCard payments into devices.

    “Coin’s Payment of Things platform is a turnkey solution to enable payments for the wearable device industry,” says Coin co-founder and CEO Kanishk Parashar.

    “By leveraging Coin’s technology, device manufacturers will benefit from significantly reduced costs and time to market.”

    He says the wearable domain is projected to grow to $53 billion by 2019.

  • Meal kits: a US$1 bn market disruptor

    Meal kits: a US$1 bn market disruptor

    A niche market has started disrupting food consumption norms, according to a new research in the US.

    The global “meal kit” market has topped $1 billion and is positioned to change the way consumers think about food at home, according to food industry research company Technomic, in itsUnderstanding Fresh Food Subscription study.

    Meal kits are subscription services where a company supplies customers with a daily or weekly delivery of prepared meals ready to heat and mix at home. Targeted especially at singles and shift workers, it represents an entirely new retail category for online suppliers, both web and app based.

    The fresh food subscription market (meal kits) is defined as a service designed to deliver fresh, pre-measured ingredients to consumers’ homes.

    “This market initially gained traction overseas, but today the US represents nearly 40 per cent of the global market,” says Technomic principal Erik Thoresen. “We project the fresh food subscription market will grow to a multi-billion-dollar market over the next five years in the US alone.”

    As well as measuring and predicting the economic health of the industry, the study analyses trends and global opportunities. It predicts that worldwide revenues from fresh food subscriptions will top $10 billion by 2020, with the US market alone growing tenfold over the next five years. The research program involved 4500 consumers from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK and the US.

  • Snapcart docket scanning concept wins funding

    Snapcart docket scanning concept wins funding

    An Indonesia-based startup that runs a service offering consumers rewards in exchange for scans of their shopping receipts has received US$1.675 million in funding just four months after launching.

    New investors in Snapcart, Wavemaker Partners and Singapore Press Holding’s SPH Media Fund, along with existing backers SMDV (Sinar Mas Digital Ventures) and Ardent Capital, launched the funding round – described as “pre-Series A” – as the company started exploring expansion options in Southeast Asia, reports Techcrunch.

    Snapcart’s business is two-fold: one one side it allows customers to scan their store receipts in exchange for cashback and rewards; on the other side, information from the receipts is compiled and used to provide clients, such as consulting agencies, with reports and information about consumer spending and shopping habits – valuable, because it is not easy to track offline commerce.

    Snapcart CEO and founder Reynazran Royono says the company has scaled faster than initially anticipated, with the funding round being wrapped up a few months ahead of schedule.

    He says the new capital will be used to develop more products, including engagement videos and analytical dashboard tools that will enable client brands to view customer behaviour in real time. There are more than 35 Snapcart clients including L’Oreal, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

    “The amount of data we’re receiving is humongous,” says Royono, who previously worked as a consultant for Procter & Gamble and Boston Consulting.

    So far, Snapcart for Android has clocked 150,000 downloads and has 85,000 monthly active users in Indonesia. An IOS app is about to be released.

    TechCrunch.com says Snapcart is expected to push beyond its initial focus on FMCG into other verticals, and the company is looking at other options that could involve small retails.

    Snapcart is also investigating regional expansion, adding former Procter & Gamble market research director Mayeth Condicion as chief data officer and co-founder. Condicion is based in Manila, which will be Snapcart’s first international expansion and soon home to its data analytics team. Jakarta will remain its technology hub.

    Meanwhile, the company is thinking of a second funding round about the middle of this year so it can push ahead with its expansion plans. Snapcart aims to achieve one million user downloads in less than 12 months.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • There’s no stopping the e-commerce boom in Singapore

    There’s no stopping the e-commerce boom in Singapore

    Sales will top $1.4 billion this year.

    Singapore’s e-commerce sector will continue to expand at a breakneck pace in coming years, according to a report by CBRE.

    Sales have grown at a record rate over the past five years, rising from just $800 million in 2012 to over $1.34 billion in 2015.

    Citing data from a report by Euromonitor International, CBRE noted that 2014’s internet retail sales grew 12.5% year-on-year to $1.08b, while mobile internet retail sales surged by 53.9% to $280.9 million.

    CBRE believes that the strong growth in online retail will drive demand for industrial space in Singapore.

    “All these indicate that Singapore’s e-commerce sector is poised to expand further, which could potentially emerge as the next underlying demand driver for the industrial market,” said CBRE.

    Lees ook:

  • WeChat use by retail investors poses headache for regulators

    WeChat use by retail investors poses headache for regulators

    The growing popularity of messaging and social media app WeChat among China’s stock market investors is posing a problem to regulators, who now find it harder to monitor trades and spot illegal activity, Reuters reports, citing traders and investors.

    While using apps for trading is not unlawful in China, regulations require reliable monitoring and recording of trades to prevent activities such as insider trading or market manipulation, and to keep regulators on top of threats to market stability such as excessive margin trading.

    The China Securities Regulatory Commission has been clamping down on breaches, including fining four brokerages in September for failing to collect information about the identities of clients who traded stocks through external systems. 

    It also shut down third-party trading software used by brokers that helped traders skirt regulations by dividing one account into many sub-accounts without the need to register a name, the news agency said, citing local media reports.

    Even so, using apps to buy and sell stocks over mobile phones is common in a country where retail investors account for 80 percent of share market volume.

    Despite closer scrutiny from China’s regulators, brokerages including large firms like China Galaxy Securities (06881.HK) and smaller entities such as Great Wall Securities, started offering WeChat share trading account services last year in a bid to access the growing pool of retail traders.

    Overall account openings swelled to around 46 million in the first half of 2015, from around two million over the same period in 2014, according to official data.

    For brokers, the advantages of using WeChat are obvious, since it is the preferred means of communication for many of its 600 million users.

    But a case in Hong Kong last month highlights regulators’ concerns with the trend.

    The regulator there suspended a trader for receiving a buy order on WhatsApp, a messaging app owned by Facebook Inc., in breach of the internal communication policies of the firm he then worked for, BTIG, noting that the company had no control over the recording and retention of such messages.

    While the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission code of conduct does not prohibit the use of social messaging apps, it encourages the strict recording and time stamping of all communications and says the use of mobile phones for orders is “strongly discouraged”.

    Some of China’s institutional investors are also using WeChat to instruct their brokers.

    “In practice lots of people don’t care about compliance and take orders on WeChat,” said a Hong Kong-based institutional sales trader specializing in China.

    Such concerns are not limited to China.

    Clara Shih, chief executive and founder of Hearsay Social, a San Francisco-based social media compliance company, said messaging apps are also a potential gap in the compliance systems that US financial services firms have spent years building.

    US brokerages must monitor and store copies of employees’ electronic communications for three years and have a duty to protect clients’ personal information and confidentiality, tasks made more complicated by the proliferation of social media platforms.

    Technology has evolved in recent years to make it easier for companies to monitor employees’ activity on traditional social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But WhatsApp and WeChat are not compatible with that technology, Shih said.

    Using social media for business is a growing trend but also a growing risk for compliance, said Craig Brauff, chief executive of Erado, a social media compliance company in Renton, Washington.

    “Regulations are designed to keep honest people honest. If someone really wants to be dishonest, there are lots of ways around it,” he said.

     

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Alibaba is preparing to do battle with rural China’s terrible roads

    Alibaba is preparing to do battle with rural China’s terrible roads

    Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, is hungry to expand its reach into less developed parts of northern China, and it’s prepared to do it even though it’s going to have a tough time delivering its goods to customers there.

    Part of the company’s 2016 strategy involves growing its operations in China’s biggest cities. That includes paying more attention to online grocery and electronic sales in Beijing, a gateway for serving the some 400 million people in the less developed northern territories, the company said.

    It’s being packaged as an “Alibaba everywhere” approach, and hinges on making it easier for rural populations to buy from Alibaba. The company’s slowing growth (paywall) in larger Chinese cities has spurred it to make inroads in untapped regions.

    The problem? Getting “everywhere” is tough. China’s postal system is notoriously unreliable, there are too few distribution centers, and rural roads are in bad shape.

    Total online sales in China are expected to reach $356 billion in 2016, according to the Journal. In large cities, that means millions of packages being delivered by couriers zipping through streets on scooters. In far-flung communities, though, getting deliveries is a more cumbersome venture.

    Customer complaints about lost mail have led China to strip (paywall) more than 100 delivery companies of their permits—a challenge for a country that’s been ranked by the World Bank as 26th in the world for logistics infrastructure, according to the Journal.

    One reason for this is that China has fewer dominant national retail chains that serve consumers than in the US, where big- and medium-sized box stores are sprinkled generously across the 50 states. The US also benefits from the roads built in the late 1800s to accommodate a robust postal system.

    And because China’s retail store networks are less developed, more than 11% of total retail sales take place online, versus 8% in the US, according to Moody’s. That’s expected to increase to just under 16% by the end of this year. That means Alibaba will have its work cut out finding a way to get reliably get packages from online to off-road.

  • Samsung Pay is coming to Singapore

    Samsung Pay is coming to Singapore

    South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics is expanding its mobile payments service to three additional countries, including Singapore.

    The Korean company made the announcement during its press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, held ahead of the show’s official opening. Samsung Pay allows consumers to pay at retail locations using their smartphones.

    It also confirmed the news in a Twitter update. “I am happy to announce we’re adding Australia, Singapore, and Brazil to the Samsung Pay roadmap,” said Samsung Electronics America President and COO Tim Baxter. No official date was announced for the three launches.

    The service launched last year in South Korea and the United States, with plans to enter other markets, including China, Spain and Britain.

    Samsung hopes the payments service will set its phones apart from competing devices, helping to protect market share against rivals such as Apple and Huawei Technologies and compel users to pay a bit more for the convenience. Apple announced in October last year its competing Apple Pay service was also coming to Singapore this year.

    Samsung has reported a strong response to Samsung Pay in its home country and the US, though the service does not generate revenue on its own for Samsung. An early advantage for Samsung Pay is its compatibility with magnetic stripe card readers already in wide use among retailers. In comparison, Apple Pay requires retailers to install new equipment supporting near-field communication technology.

  • Amazon opens web services in Korea

    Amazon opens web services in Korea

    Amazon Web Services has reported the opening of its twelfth geographic locale in Korea bringing the number of accessibility zones to 32. There are two new accessibility zones accessible in Seoul giving Korean clients the power alternative that they have been asking for quite a while.  The new zones bolsters Amazon EC2 , T2, M4, C4, I2, D2, and R3 occurrences . Other services incorporate Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing. A full posting is accessible in a site by Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at Amazon Web Services.

    The service is accessible now and developers can get to the zone details from https://aws.amazon.com. Itemized data relating to the zones was not made accessible but rather every zone comprises of one or more server farms. For Korean clients these will convey low dormancy arrangements anyplace in Korea, conveying under 10 millisecond service the nation over, something that was not accessible before to Amazon clients.

    The Act on the Development of Cloud Computing and Protection of Users (Korean Cloud Act) came into action on 28th September 2015 and was the first Cloud processing law to be passed in the world. With two zones accessible, adaptation to internal failure and failover between the two zones inside of the single national fringe is additionally ensured. The accessibility zones have been produced to be profoundly adaptable so that if request develops AWS will have the capacity to meet it.

    Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President, Amazon Web Services remarked: “Customers continue to choose AWS as their infrastructure technology platform because we have a lot more functionality than any other cloud provider, a significantly larger partner and customer ecosystem built around AWS, and unmatched maturity, security, and performance.”

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • India’s direct selling industry likely to reach Rs 645 bn by 2025

    India’s direct selling industry likely to reach Rs 645 bn by 2025

    A report titled, ‘Direct 2015 – Direct selling: Mapping the industry across Indian states’ by FICCI-KPMG says that direct selling, the oldest and traditional forms of selling, is today a successful industry operating in over 100 countries, with a market size of $180 billion.

    In India, the market is estimated at Rs 75 billion (2013-14), and accounts for 0.4 per cent of the total retail sales in the country. The direct selling industry in the country has the potential to reach Rs 645 billion by 2025.

    As per the report, North India is the largest region by market size accounting for direct sales worth Rs 22 billion in 2013-14; South India holds the second highest share of the direct selling market is worth Rs 19 billion in 2013-14. While the north east is the smallest market, it has recorded the highest growth rate of 14 per cent in India with revenues of Rs 9 billion.

    The growth in direct selling has primarily been driven by rising income levels, high rate of urbanisation and growing consumerism in the states. The report claims that despite witnessing growth, direct selling industry faces multiple changes, one of the biggest being the lack of regulatory clarity.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • SPH Media Fund invests in Indonesia-based cashback app Snapcart

    SPH Media Fund invests in Indonesia-based cashback app Snapcart

    Snapcart, a mobile app based in Indonesia, announced today (Jan 5) that it has successfully raised US$1,675,000 (S$2,385,000) pre-series A funding.

    Among this round’s participants are Wavemaker Partners, SMDV, Ardent Capital and SPH Media Fund – the investment arm of Singapore’s leading media group Singapore Press Holdings.

    “I believe we were able to earn the confidence of investors after our early signing with major FMCG brands Nestle and L’Oreal in Indonesia,” said Reynazran Royono, CEO and Founder of Snapcart. “Our pre-launch and launch traction was also amazing with 12,000 app downloads before any marketing campaigns were launched. In a relatively short period we were able to sign more than 35 brands, including brands from Procter & Gamble and Unilever”

    According to Snapcart, since its launch on Sept 2, 2015, the number of downloads has grown to over 150,000, with more than 85,000 monthly active users.

    However, the company aims to achieve 1 million users downloads in less than a year.

    Snapcart will use the capital to develop new products; including engagement video features and analytical dashboard tools. These features will accommodate brands with the platform they need in order to see their consumer behaviours in real-time, as well as to aid brands in formulating their next marketing actions.

    The company is also planning an expansion to at least two other markets in Southeast Asia, starting with the Philippines early this year. Snapcart’s iOS version launch will also be taking place at around the same time.

    “Our first stage of development was focused on mass data collection and user acquisition, activation, and engagement. Now, with over a thousand receipts received per day, we are looking to perfecting the built-in automation system and upgrading the app. In Indonesia, there are many different formats for receipts, even within the same retail franchise, which makes it harder to be automated. This is the hassle that we want to tackle in the next stage.” CTO of Snapcart, Laith Abu Rakty, said.

    “User acquisition is always on the agenda, but now we’re doing it by partnering with FMCG companies and other verticals through a combination of offline activities and online marketing.” added Mr Rey.

    Lees ook:

  • Matahari Department Store ups stake in MatahariMall.com operator

    Matahari Department Store ups stake in MatahariMall.com operator

    Indonesia public listed retail company PT Matahari Department Store Tbk (LPPF) has increased its ownership in PT Global Ecommerce Indonesia (GEI), which indirectly owns stake in e-commerce player MatahariMall.com.

    GEI is the controlling shareholder of PT Sinar Rekata Earth and PT Lenteng Transcontinental. The two subsidiaries are the principal shareholders of PT Solutions E-commerce Global, which operates MatahariMall.com.

    In a prospectus submitted to the Indonesian Stock Exchange, Matahari Department Store said, it has bought 4.4 million shares of GEI valued at Rp 53.14 billion ($3.88 million).

    LPPF exercised its option to buy the GEI shares at a price of Rp 12,065 per share in accordance with the agreement signed granting option rights on August 15, 2015.

    Prior to the transaction, LPPF’s holding was 2.63 million shares in PT GEI or 1.99%, PT Matahari Putra Prima Tbk (MPPA) 2.63 million shares or 1.99%, PT Duta Wibisana Anjaya 5 million shares, or 3.79%, PT Sinar Mustika Dutamas 10 million shares, or 7.58%, PT Investama Digital Venture 111.65 million shares or 84.64%.

    After the transaction (options were exercised), the ownership of LPPF in PT GEI increased to 5.16%, MPPA at 1.93%, PT Duta Wibisana Anjaya 3.67%, Dutamas Sinar Mustika 7.34% and PT Investama Digital Venture 81.9%.

    In the prospectus, Matahari Department Store said that it carried out the transactions because it considers e-commerce as having high growth potential in the country.

    MatahariMall.com, officially launched its operations in September 2015 to tap Indonesia’s growing online retail space.

    Also Read: Indonesia e-commerce Dealbook : Government mulls five-year roadmap, Mataharimall launches online platform

    Indonesia’s MatahariMall ties up with state postal service for O2O push

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Vipshop Stock Slumping as China Trading Halted

    Vipshop Stock Slumping as China Trading Halted

    Shares of Vipshop Holdings are lower by 7.99% to $14.05 on Monday morning, as stocks traded in the U.S. but based in China tumble due to the global stock selloff, spurred by concerns regarding the Asian nation’s economic stability.

    Vipshop is a Guangzhou-based holding company that operates as an online discount retailer for brands in China.

    Weak manufacturing data in China sent the country’s markets plummeting, with the Shanghai index falling by 6.9% and the Shenzhen down by more than 8% before trading was halted on Monday.

    Contributing to the decline in China’s market is a lower than expected Caixin survey, which was released earlier today, CNBC.com reports. The Caixin index is a gauge of nationwide manufacturing activity, with a focus on small and medium sized companies.

    The Caixin December manufacturing PMI was lower at 48.2 versus 48.6 in November.

    Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its “risk-adjusted” total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer’s view or that of this articles’s author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

    We rate VIPSHOP HOLDINGS LTD -ADR as a Buy with a ratings score of B-. This is driven by some important positives, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, notable return on equity, reasonable valuation levels, impressive record of earnings per share growth and compelling growth in net income. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

    Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

    • VIPS’s very impressive revenue growth exceeded the industry average of 38.0%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues leaped by 54.6%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company’s bottom line, improving the earnings per share.
    • VIPSHOP HOLDINGS LTD -ADR reported significant earnings per share improvement in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, VIPSHOP HOLDINGS LTD -ADR increased its bottom line by earning $0.23 versus $0.09 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($3.48 versus $0.23).
    • Current return on equity exceeded its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a clear sign of strength within the company. Compared to other companies in the Internet & Catalog Retail industry and the overall market, VIPSHOP HOLDINGS LTD -ADR’s return on equity significantly exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.
    • The company, on the basis of net income growth from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed compared to the Internet & Catalog Retail industry average, but is greater than that of the S&P 500. The net income increased by 79.9% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $27.70 million to $49.83 million.
  • Hong Kong e-money ordinance to boost retail payment market

    Hong Kong e-money ordinance to boost retail payment market

    Hong Kong’s new e-money ordinance will help further develop the retail payment services market in the SAR and enhance public confidence in using such products, according to experts in the banking, financial and legal sectors. However, the high capital requirement for a licensed operator may be a barrier for startups to enter the market.

    The global retail payment landscape is changing rapidly as we see a growing number of new and innovative payment products and services. E-money or stored value facilities (SVFs) is one of them. It allows users to store pre-paid money on smart cards, mobile phones or Internet-based payment accounts and use them to pay for goods or services.

    Apart from banks, non-banks like telecom operators, e-commerce companies, technology solutions providers, FinTech startups and alike are moving into the retail payment market especially in the Internet and mobile spaces.

    New e-money regulatory framework

    Enacted on November 13, the Payment Systems and Stored Value Facilities Ordinance (PSSVFO) puts into effect a new regulatory framework for stored value facilities (SVF) and retail payment systems (RPS).

    Compared to RPS, SVF has aroused interests and concerns among industry players and the public.

    Under the Ordinance, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is empowered to implement a mandatory licensing system for multi-purpose SVFs. One-year grace period is allowed for existing SVF issuers or new market operators to apply for a license from the HKMA.

    From 13 November 2016 onwards, it will be illegal for any issuers, unless exempted, to issue or operate any SVFs without a license.

    The Ordinance covers both device-based (card-based or physical device-based) and non-device based (Internet-based or mobile accounts) multi-purpose SVFs.

    The only device-based SVF that is already regulated is the Octopus card, which is licensed under the Banking Ordinance. Banks licensed under the Banking Ordinance will be deemed to be licensed to issue and operate SVFs.

    Exempted SVF types include single-purpose SVF such as prepaid cards or loyalty cards; bonus and loyalty point schemes such as airline mileage programs; and SVFs used for purchasing digital products through electronic devices.

    “We started seeing a lot of e-money products — online and mobile, but they were not captured by our regulatory regime. We saw the need to expand the scope to cover those products,” said Li Shu-pui (photo left), head of financial infrastructure development division at the HKMA at the Hong Kong International Computer Conference last November.

    He added, “We carried out consultation with industry players. They wanted us to expand the scheme because they can see the benefit of being regulated by HKMA. It provides confidence to users. As a result we expanded the Clearing and Settlement Systems Ordinance to an amended ordinance which is now called PSSVFO.”

    Lees ook:

  • Koreans Embrace Mobile Shopping

    Koreans Embrace Mobile Shopping

    The total value of purchases made through mobile phones hit a record in November 2015.

    According data from Statistics Korea on Monday, the amount of mobile transactions surged 52.3 percent on year to W2.44 trillion (US$1=W1,190).

    That is almost half of the total online purchases in November, which also hit a record of W4.97 trillion, up 19.5 percent compared to the same month of 2014.

    Online purchases accounted for 15.4 percent of total retail sales.

    By product, purchases of office supplies and stationery surged 132.7 percent and 138 percent, respectively, perhaps ironically using new-generation technology to pay for the products it is gradually replacing.

    Sales of cosmetics and groceries also surged 38.2 percent and 35.4 percent.

    By retail sector, sales at convenience stores rose 33.8 percent compared to the average 4.2-percent rise in overall retail sales, while sales at supermarkets and department stores more or less stagnated.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook: