New Global e-Commerce Report from Citcon and PYMNTS Reveals Challenges and Opportunities for Merchants Eager to Expand APAC Presence
Citcon Inc., the leading payment provider enabling global commerce at scale, today reported results of a new global survey of 500 leading merchants in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom revealing the opportunities and challenges of conducting eCommerce in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC). The Emerging APAC Opportunity, developed in collaboration with PYMNTS, reveals that while more than 50% of all APAC eCommerce purchases are abandoned before checkout, merchants agree that accepting local payment options at checkout could reduce that number by half.
APAC countries currently account for nearly three-quarters of total global retail growth, and about two-thirds of online growth. From 2014 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate for APAC retail sales was more than quadruple that of the rest of the world, and online sales growth nearly doubled the rest of the world’s1. The Emerging APAC Opportunity report underscores the merchant perspective concerning this potential market growth.
- 70% of all merchants surveyed expect APAC sales to increase over the course of the next three years.
- 37% of all merchants anticipate their sales growth to reach or exceed 50%
Still, according to the report, more than half of all eCommerce carts in APAC are currently abandoned prior to purchase, inhibiting this growth potential. Merchants already operating in APAC identified the two primary factors underlying high cart abandonment rates as cost-related factors (60%) and payment friction (47%). While cost factors such as shipping and competitive pricing may often be out of a merchant’s control, reducing payment friction is highly addressable.
- 47% of merchants currently selling to APAC customers believe shoppers abandon their carts because they cannot use their preferred payment method or because they have payment security concerns
- Only 13% of merchants currently selling to APAC customers accept domestic global wallets
- The small minority of merchants that currently offer localized payment options report cart abandonment rates 32% lower than their counterparts that do not
“Merchants recognize the mission-critical role local payments will play in their success in Asia-Pacific markets,” explains Chuck Huang, Founder and CEO of Citcon. “Seventy percent of the global merchants we surveyed predicted that cart abandonment rates could be reduced by half just by offering trusted, local payment schemes to consumers. Expanding payment options to better serve local APAC consumers has the potential to unlock exponential growth for merchants of all types.”
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