Philippine digital economy expected to grow to $10 billion by 2025
The Philippine e-commerce industry is poised for exponential growth, with its share of the Southeast Asian market expected to be worth $10 billion by 2025, according to the latest report on the region’s digital economy by Google and Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek. However, there’s still a lot of work to do in order to achieve that.
“E-commerce now is only 1.5 per cent of the Philippines’ retail market, so there’s lots of room to grow,” said Dino Araneta, founder and CEO of digital logistics company QuadX at an e-commerce industry meetup in the country last month, according to Tech in Asia.
“We can get that number to five per cent in just three years, but we have to work on the experience of buyers and sellers in making orders online.”
However, in the Philippines, cash is still king. Cash-on-delivery is very popular in the country, with 80 per cent of online merchants offering this payment option. This is largely because a whopping 98 per cent of Filipinos still don’t have credit cards.
Yet instead of just capitalising on consumers’ inability to pay with anything other than cash, e-tailers should look into e-payments because this is the way to go, according to Martin Cu, country head of last-mile logistics company Ninja Van.
Furthermore, traditional businesses moving online is just the first chapter in the story of the Philippines’ e-commerce industry. As the nation’s Internet literacy and access to digital services grow, the amount of requests and orders that online businesses need to handle will increase as well.
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that primarily use existing platforms such as Facebook to sell their products will be affected the most, as they may not have enough resources to put up a dedicated customer service department. New technologies such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence will also bring entire new buying experiences, and businesses will need to facilitate the innovations to stay afloat.
Meanwhile, in a new online retail forecast for Southeast Asia, research company Forrester Analytics predicts that e-commerce in the region Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will grow annually at 23 per cent in average to reach $53 billion in 2023, up from $19 billion in 2018. The Philippines will experience the strongest growth at 30.4 per cent ahead of Vietnam and Thailand.
The Philippine e-commerce industry is poised for exponential growth, with its share of the Southeast Asian market expected to be worth $10 billion by 2025, according to the latest report on the region’s digital economy by Google and Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek. However, there’s still a lot of work to do in order to achieve that. “E-commerce now is only 1.5 per cent of the Philippines’ retail market, so there’s lots of room to grow,” said Dino Araneta, founder and CEO of digital logistics company QuadX at an e-commerce industry meetup in the country last month, according to Tech...
The Philippine e-commerce industry is poised for exponential growth, with its share of the Southeast Asian market expected to be worth $10 billion by 2025, according to the latest report on the region’s digital economy by Google and Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek. However, there’s still a lot of work to do in order to achieve that.
“E-commerce now is only 1.5 per cent of the Philippines’ retail market, so there’s lots of room to grow,” said Dino Araneta, founder and CEO of digital logistics company QuadX at an e-commerce industry meetup in the country last month, according to Tech in Asia.
“We can get that number to five per cent in just three years, but we have to work on the experience of buyers and sellers in making orders online.”
However, in the Philippines, cash is still king. Cash-on-delivery is very popular in the country, with 80 per cent of online merchants offering this payment option. This is largely because a whopping 98 per cent of Filipinos still don’t have credit cards.
Yet instead of just capitalising on consumers’ inability to pay with anything other than cash, e-tailers should look into e-payments because this is the way to go, according to Martin Cu, country head of last-mile logistics company Ninja Van.
Furthermore, traditional businesses moving online is just the first chapter in the story of the Philippines’ e-commerce industry. As the nation’s Internet literacy and access to digital services grow, the amount of requests and orders that online businesses need to handle will increase as well.
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that primarily use existing platforms such as Facebook to sell their products will be affected the most, as they may not have enough resources to put up a dedicated customer service department. New technologies such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence will also bring entire new buying experiences, and businesses will need to facilitate the innovations to stay afloat.
Meanwhile, in a new online retail forecast for Southeast Asia, research company Forrester Analytics predicts that e-commerce in the region Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will grow annually at 23 per cent in average to reach $53 billion in 2023, up from $19 billion in 2018. The Philippines will experience the strongest growth at 30.4 per cent ahead of Vietnam and Thailand.
