PLDT-owned tech companies PayMaya Philippines and Voyager Innovations reaffirmed its support to the e-commerce thrust of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in enabling micro-businesses with digital payments and digital commerce solutions through its participation at the recently held E-Commerce Business Seminar series.
Entrepreneurs and businesses who attended the series learned about digital payments acceptance for both online and face-to-face transactions with the PayMaya Business suite of digital payments solutions as well as the how-to?s of setting up an online store with TackThis! e-commerce store builder.
PayMaya Business is from PayMaya Philippines while TackThis! is offered by Voyager Innovations. Both companies are part of the Voyager Group, the digital innovations arm of PLDT and Smart Communications.
“We have seen that consumer buying habits have changed throughout the years, which is why businesses have to innovate. Nowadays it’s not enough that businesses set up a physical store. They now have to be where customers are,” said Patrick Zulueta, product marketing manager for PayMaya Business.
Zulueta joined other speakers from the e-commerce and payments industry who shared insights about the e-commerce business model in response to the first Philippine e-Commerce Roadmap, an initiative by DTI to enable more local businesses harness the potential of e-commerce platforms.
The training seminar and workshop was organized by DTI to help growing businesses move to e-commerce space by making them cognizant of the available modern-day business solutions they can use.
PayMaya Business is a suite of digital payments solutions offered by PayMaya Philippines, which allows businesses to receive payments from all cards anytime, anywhere.
The suite includes PayMaya Swipe, a point-of-sale dongle that can be attached to any mobile device so businesses can accept card payments; PayMaya Checkout, a system that allows establishments to accept online payments; and PayMaya Manager, a dashboard that tracks and manages all the transactions made from different POS devices in just one place.
TackThis! is an e-commerce platform that can help businesses create their own online store in a matter of minutes, enabling easy store creation, shopping cart integration, online payments acceptance, and even up to fulfillment and delivery of goods with courier partners.
?Customers make purchase decisions as they browse through apps and websites. It can be frustrating that they can?t buy what they want because merchants lack an online store or an online payment mechanism. For entrepreneurs, this becomes a lost sale opportunity,? said Rebecca Ricalde, AVP for digital commerce at Voyager Innovations.
According to the Philippine e-Commerce Roadmap, the Philippines is seen to be a prime stage in developing its e-commerce industry with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) projected to increase by 101.4% between 2013 to 2018, and the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-Commerce industry at 107.4%.
The projected increase in digital payments transactions is said to be a result of businesses adapting to shifting consumer behavior.
Companies know that their customers can now be found online, and while many would like to bring their businesses on board the Internet economy, most do not know how. This is why two of the key areas of the e-commerce roadmap are fostering of information flow and infrastructural development of e-payment systems in collaboration between the government and private sectors such as PayMaya Business and TackThis!
For DTI to meet its objective to have e-commerce to contribute 25% to the Philippine GDP by 2020, the government has to enable 100,000 micro-small, and medium enterprises to do e-commerce, and have 40-50% of Internet users doing e-commerce. With platforms like TackThis and PayMaya Business, 90% of small medium businesses in the country, the main drivers of the economy, can now do business online.
“With the Philippines having the fastest growing Internet population in the world, the Internet economy is seen as an enabler that will allow domestic industry to connect with the global economy. Synergy between the government and the business sector is very important to fully enhance e-commerce ecosystem in the country. Innovations such as Tackthis and PayMaya are here to help Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to digitally transform and get activated on e-commerce,? said Department of Trade and Industry undersecretary Prudencio M. Reyes Jr.
