The complex e-payment gateway setup process in India and mistrust towards e-payment among Asian shoppers/retailers could significantly damage the growth of global e-business industry. This could have direct impact over M-commerce which is already being challenged by the explosive transformation of desktop users (and shoppers) to mobile. Global E-Commerce sales is expected to top $1.25 Trillion by 2013 with 13% annual growth for last 5 years. However, low penetration in e-Payment gateway adoption (comparatively) is upsetting global e-commerce market.
Global Internet Traffic: Asia-Pacific The Biggest Booster
By 2016, Global internet traffic is expected to reach 13 zettabytes (trillion gigabytes), according to Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast. Asia-Pacific region will emerge as the main booster by accounting 40% of that traffic. North America and Western Europe will be the other major driver behind the internet traffic spike with 20% and 22.4% share respectively.
More than 1.016 Billion internet users are from Asia-Pacific alone. Interestingly 63% of this are accessing internet from mobile. India and China are leading countries in Asia-Pacific with highest number of internet users. While China is focused on developing confined local e-market place, the growth of e-commerce in India is at nascent stage and expected to reach $34.3 Billion by 2015 end.
E-Payment Gateway: A Daunting Aspect
Despite of such boost and promising forecast, E-payment gateway space is still quite complex. Monotonous approach, lengthy approval process and high transaction charges are turning out as upset-streams for E-Biz industry in India. Emerging startup ecosystem has further boosted the demand of robust e-business environment. And, the success of Online Ticketing Software, E-Store software and many other applications is pegged to E-Payment gateway adoption rate. Online Movie Ticketing industry, alone, is expected to stay worth $13.72 Billion with C.A.G.R. of 7.3% by 2017 and e-payment module acts as business-critical aspects of this industry.
Credit card is the most preferred online payment method in many countries including USA, U.K. However, the system of Digital wallet is also pacing up rapidly in many emerging countries due to higher adoption of Debit Cards. Developing countries like India, Thailand, and Singapore are seeing a sizable growth in e-wallet transactions. In China, third-party payment online payment market is being dominated by Alipay.
M-Commerce Is Demanding More
With more than 60% internet users available on mobile, setting up a sophisticated M-commerce is the biggest challenge for the industry. Steep rise in Social media mobile users with extended influence over online shoppers is another major challenge for e-payment gateways to address. Around 50% Smartphone users are expected to do shopping using their mobile phones by 2013 and with the explosive adoption of smartphone, these figures are only bound to grow further.
While 32% of mobile shoppers are expected to spend anything between $1 -$20, the high transaction charges could prove fatal for such low amount transaction. In fact, world’s largest payment Gateway PayPal still force online shoppers to omit fixed charges, in addition to transaction percentage, as transaction charges that ends up making retailers to lose a sizable amount on each transaction.
E-Commerce Potential of Asia-Pacific
Being the biggest region in terms of Internet users, Asia-Pacific is riding with the expectations on global index. However, a latest study reveals that only 2 countries – China and Malaysia – are able to find place in the list of Top 10 countries ranked on the basis of their e-commerce potential. Needless to say that despite of being the 3rd largest country with maximum internet users, India fails to find any pace in the list.
 Asian Challenges, Global Impact
All above scenarios clearly depict that Asia-Pacific holds the nerve of global E-commerce industry. However, besides infrastructure and conservative style challenges, E-Payment gateway is one of the major concerns that could prove fatal for the industry growth in long run. At the time when many of European countries are facing economic imbalance, Asia-Pacific is the only unaffected region and promising market for global e-commerce industry. However, sand is slipping out of hand and in the absence of any comfort cushion, it’s become vital for E-Payment Gateway Industry to reform the whole mechanism – atleast for its own growth and wide adoption.
