Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten aims to become the world’s leading e-commerce player by 2020.
Rakuten, with e-commerce businesses in 13 countries around the world including Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand, is currently the world’s fourth largest e-commerce player.
In Thailand, where e-commerce is growing 30 per cent in average, it is expecting to grow by 50 per cent this year.
“Thailand is one of the next star countries for Rakuten because it is growing a lot. The number of Internet users, smartphone users and 3G networks is growing as well,” said Rakuten Asia chairman and CEO Toru Shimada.
Business to business to customer model (B2B2C model) is the cornerstone of Rakuten which it describes as a win-win solution for the company and merchants.
“We empower local merchants with our e-commerce platform,” said Shimada.
Rakuten offers several payment methods to choose from. It says that credit cards are more popular in developed countries while debit cards are more popular in developing countries.
It is also embedding Rakuten Merchant System Global (RMSG) in its domestic sites, removing the boundaries for merchants to reach global consumer base.
“All countries. Malaysia, Indonesia and Spain have already moved to use RMSG. Thailand is moving,” said Shimada.
It is also aware of the smartphones’ role in online shopping, hence, it plans to catch up with the trend, it says.
“We are basically based on PC businesses. We are established in Japan. We see a good future for smartphone applications for e-commerce because the web technology on smartphones and tablets has improved and is of better quality,” he said.
