Online shopping booming this Yuletide

MANILA, Philippines - Last year, Judith Concepcion, a 25-year-old business process outsourcing (BPO) agent working in Makati, bought gifts for her family and godchildren in malls and Divisoria. But this year, since she was assigned to the night shift, Judith turned to the Internet to complete her holiday shopping.

“Maayos naman (It was OK), a lot of choices online and convenient, especially with the holiday rush traffic situation,” she said.  

Like Judith, Filipinos are shopping more online this Christmas with the introduction of more digital commerce and payment options.

Based on data released by eCommerce marketplace Takatack.com, volumes of goods purchased through their site for the fourth quarter of 2015 increased ten-fold in terms of gross merchandising value compared to the same period last year.

The most popular items sold include electronics and gadgets, fashion and beauty items and children’s items like toys and clothes.

“We expect this to even increase in the next few days as more people are completing last minute holiday shopping and bookings,” said Mitch Padua, vice president and head for digital commerce at Voyager Innovations, the tech company behind Takatack.com.

Takatack.com was launched in September last year and is now considered the largest online marketplace in the country that aggregates listings from various merchants as well as partner eCommerce sites such as Zalora.ph.

To keep up with accelerating demand, Takatack.com grew its merchants seven times since the start of the year.

Padua also sees a trend in transactions from Metro Manila and goods delivered to the provinces. An example is Armel Daffon, originally from Ormoc but who now works in Manila. Instead of just sending money to his relatives back home, he orders goods online and has them delivered to the province. 

“It’s heartwarming when your relatives know that you personally chose the gifts you are sending them,” he said. 

This convenient option available through eCommerce has been made available by Takatack to overseas Filipino workers in Singapore, Hong Kong and our seamen aboard ships through their manning agencies. 

This perceived increase in Filipino consumer online shopping is reflective of the growth in the regional digital commerce industry market. 

An article published by market research firm eMarketer said that retail eCommerce sales in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to hit $877.61 billion by the end of the year, up 35.7 percent from 2015. 

The article also concluded that “for the first time, the region will not only have the largest digital retail market in the world, but its share of global digital retail spend will also reach 52.5 percent – the first time it holds an outright majority of the world market.”

On the digital payments side, data from PayMaya Philippines (formerly Smart eMoney, Inc.) saw a surge of users and usage for the Christmas season. December showed a rapid spike in both new accounts and online purchases from the previous month.

PayMaya saw a 200 percent increase month over month in both online purchases volume and new users using the digital payments platform.

“For most online commerce shops in emerging markets like the Philippines, cash-on-delivery is still most popular, but it entails risks and operational inefficiencies. For both merchant and customer, online payments offer the safest and most convenient way. However, because only around 3 to 5 percent of Filipinos have credit cards, payments have always been a challenge. Now, with new innovations like PayMaya, we’re cracking this problem and opening up eCommerce to everyone,” said Orlando Vea, president and CEO of Voyager Innovations and PayMaya Philippines, both digital innovation units of PLDT and Smart Communications Inc.

The first of its kind all-in-one digital payments mobile app and physical card, PayMaya was introduced in August this year and a variant that comes with a beep wallet for LRT and MRT payments was commercially marketed in September.

It is now the no. 1 financial app in Google Play Philippines, rated more popular than global service Paypal and local services like GCash. 

“Users of the PayMaya app are predominantly millennials, looking for the easiest and most convenient way to start shopping online. This customer segment is tech savvy and while they’re not economically at the bottom of the pyramid, they are mostly uncarded. Having their own means to pay to any eCommerce store just by downloading an app is their primary reason for getting PayMaya,” said Raymund Villanueva, head of digital marketing at Voyager Innovations and PayMaya Philippines.

This observation is validated by correlating data from Takatack.com. According to Padua, almost 70 percent of their eCommerce site shoppers are from the 18 to 35 years old range. 

The numbers also show an increasing tilt toward mobile consumer usage. Data from Takatack.com shows that 54 percent of its users are using mobile phones while 12 percent are on tablets and the remaining 34 percent on PCs.