and they can support English, Cantonese (lei kong mat yeh ah?) and Mandarin.

Paypal SEA Customer Service Hotline
+65 6510 4584
+65 6823 2061
Monday to Friday (9am to 9pm)
Saturday to Sunday (9am to 5pm)

We think this is a very good start. Considering Paypal has been trying very hard to hide their contact number (by providing answers to every imaginable questions might asked by idiot, genius or aliens – forcing you through all the FAQ and their rigid step-by-step automated system).

Who can blame them for doing that? Paypal got more than 150 million users… If every “customers” just call them once to Say “Hi, what’s up dude?” (cantonese:-Nei hou mah? Shek bao mei ah?)  once a year, and ONLY once a year, the call centre boys and gals will go on strike!

It will be interesting to find out – Will your call be handled by robots with artificial intelligence that can “understand your questions” and reply with a solution? or Is it outsourced services answered by third party payroll? or would it be handled directly by Paypal employees? Share your experience if any!

“I like to shop for clothes online because no sales girls will pester me,” said Cecelia Wang, a 23-year-old university student in Taipei who said she spent about 1,500 Taiwan dollars, about $43, each month on Internet purchases. “For online shopping, all I need to do is sit in my room and shop, which is great.”

Internet retailing is increasingly making its presence felt in Asia because telecommunications infrastructure has improved and payment, a major obstacle to online shopping, is increasingly secure, analysts say.

Internet penetration rates, the percentage of the population that has Internet access, is about 17 percent in Asia versus 73 percent in North America and almost 50 percent in Europe, according to www.internetworldstats.com.

As more people in countries like China and India get hooked up to the Internet, online sales are expected to rise by an average of 20 percent a year. In some markets, including Japan, they are expected to increase by as much as 40 percent annually.

“There is a huge opportunity for retailers in Asia-Pacific to benefit from the cost-savings of operating online,” said Sandra Hanchard, a senior analyst at Hitwise, an “online intelligence service” subsidiary of Experian Group.

“Surfing the Internet is now a mainstream lifestyle activity,” Hanchard said. “More and more traditional retailers are realizing that this is an opportunity to connect directly with consumers.”

Although the global economic downturn has affected both traditional and online retailers, analysts say the gloomy economic outlook is actually encouraging consumers to hunt for second-hand goods online or make greater use of auction and rental Web sites, like www.thatbagiwant.com.

Asia’s technology-savvy online shoppers buy everything from flowers to airline tickets. Online games like mah-jongg are gaining popularity in Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Australia, shoppers are drawn to overseas retailers’ Web sites.

Amazon.com and eBay are among the most popular sites in Asia. On eBay India, which has more than two million registered users, top purchases in 2008 included gemstones, mobile handsets, MP3 players, women’s apparel and Indian stamps and coins, said Deepa Thomas, eBay India’s senior manager of pop culture.

The company’s sales show that despite relatively low Internet penetration, Indians have readily embraced online shopping. “Earlier, people only bought easily affordable items, but now they’re also buying more high-value items and unusual items, as they have more confidence shopping online,” Thomas said.

The market research firm Euromonitor International forecasts that Internet retail sales in the Asia-Pacific region will have doubled in 2012 from 2007, reaching more than $71 billion by 2012.

Asia still lags behind the United States, where Forrester Research says that online spending in 2008 was $141 billion and could reach $156 billion this year.

In the United States, online sales at retailers like Best Buy and Macy’s continue to grow despite the recession and weaker physical store sales.

Hanchard says that online retailing in the Asia-Pacific region has been slow to develop, compared with its use in Europe and the United States, partly because retailers have not put as much money into their online channels.

In Australia, broadband speed and worries about payment security have also acted as deterrents. Improvements in Internet technology and signs that more consumers are shopping online in Asia is encouraging some retailers to take better advantage of online distribution channels.

RR Australia, owner of Radio Rentals, Australia’s largest household appliances rental company, started an online electrical store called Big Brown Box in November, in part because Australians cannot order electronics from Web sites abroad because of differences in voltage and electrical sockets.

“We know that the appetite for consumers’ purchasing online is growing by the day,” said RR Australia’s managing director, John Hughes. “There are many people who are very time-poor, relative to their ability to actually get out there and shop.”

What is interesting, say analysts at KPMG, is that the online retail sales market is expanding in more mature markets, including Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. These are countries that possess some of the world’s most effective communication services and high penetration for broadband Internet access.

In Taiwan, online shopping transactions rose 32.3 percent to 243 billion dollars last year, the Institute for Information Industry said, with most online shoppers buying clothes, accessories, beauty and health products. A Visa e-Commerce Tracking survey of 3,000 Internet users in Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong found that the average amount of spending online in a 12-month period ending in April 2008 was $3,000.

Original News source from IHT

Dear iPay88 Merchant,

You are advised NOT to accept any orders from the following high risk countries to avoid charge-back later due to fraudulent credit card transaction:

• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Great Britain, particularly the Greater London area
• Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam (Hakfort)
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Lithuania
• Kazakhstan
• Ukraine
• Balkan states (former Yugoslavia)
• Ivory Coast
• Nigeria
• Ghana
• Egypt

Besides, the customer’s behavior could help uncover fraudulent intentions beforehand, so you should be on the lookout for the following warning signs:

1. A customer wants to pay the item using several credit cards (i.e. more than 2 cards).
   ( Our comment: Unless it’s huge sum that exceeds the limit of the cards, people don’t normally pay for an order using multiple cards. You don’t do that during the supermarket checkout and you normally would not do that online too. )
   
   
2. Same credit card number used by several name, email address or contact numbers.
   ( Our comment: Merchants are never allowed to keep the 16 digits credit card number, unless, if you are Amazon or Dell. However, merchant can see the first 6 digits and last 4 digits of the transacted Visa / Master card in the iPay88 admin. You will hardly see any 2 cards that coincidentally have the same first 6 digits and the last 4 digits number, this alone should raise an alert for extra checking.)
   
   
3. Have a record to use “Pick Up Card” or “Stolen Card”.
   ( Our comment: As we last check, “Pick up card = Stolen Card”, please don’t ask us which genius came out with the jargon “pick up card”, can’t they use some name which is easy to understand and straightforward? )
   
   
4. A new visitor to your online store and immediately buy from you in just a few seconds.
   ( Our comment: To track this you need a shopping cart that track the time an anonymous client first visit your site until it checkout from your cart. )
   
   
5. A first time customer buys from you in large quantity / amount.
   ( Our comment: So you are not dell or amazon and why would they trust you with such a large purchase?  Double check on it!)
   
   
6. The customer immediately starts discussing problems, such as “If the card doesn’t work, I’ll send you my wife’s credit card number”.
   ( Our comment: This one should sounds an alarm as my wife never allowed me to touch her credit cards. )
   
   
7. Orders from your non-targeted market (i.e. You are targeting Malaysia market only but suddenly receive order from other country)
   ( Our comment: It’s only normal that you get International orders (come on, this is the Internet!), it means you are on the right track on your marketing! But don’t be too excited, cross border trade is tricky and it’s hard to determine whether the clients are genuine or not. Always be more careful until you find a pattern of your client buying behaviour.)
   
   

Please always verify your customer before any product / service delivery. If you have any doubt whatsoever about an order, do not carry it out; alternatively, you can contact our Fraud Control Unit at +6(03) 9200 5555 (ext: 245) for further assistance. Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.

Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.

As you can see, “Cross border” trade is more risky. I think you can understand the notion of not doing business with Nigeria (this guy beg to differ), but London also on the list? There’s gotta be a better way.

This is where Neowave’s Fraud Alert System comes handy. Safest sign of orders normally follow below simplified formula [ (billing address = shipping address ) Near To IP Address Range and NOT From (Free Email or Open Proxy)].

However, nothing is 100% Fraud Proof. But Fraud Alert System gives you better illustrated information for you to make a better decision that significantly reduce your risk exposed.

The bottomline is, if you ever in any doubt, call the clients (landlines) !

Look no further! Subscribe to our E-commerce SME Plan and Learn from our Google Adword Professional (Hmmm…it’s me, sorry for hard selling) on the fastest way to kickstart your e-commerce marketing. This courses comes Free for SME that subscribes to our E-commerce Plan for SME, from just RM299 / month only.

Below is the full slide of our Google Adwords Kick Start Course! (It’s not a preview! It’s full slide! and NO, we are not insane!) Feel free to download  and share it.

Why do we do that? Well, there’s NO Secrets in the slide. In the end of the day – the testing, the execution, the creativity of your copywriting will determine whether you lose or win the Internet Marketing Battle (with the ultimate winner – Google, laugh all the way to the bank, of course)

Apart from Google Adwords,  we will also reveal more on other means of Internet Marketing to kickstart your stores. Below slide is barely scratching the surface. In our complex world, you need multi-channel traffic strategies to hit the jackpot!

Congratulation to our team member – Sunzi Lim, for successfully pass the test and now is officially a Paypal Certified Developer. This is another credential adding to neowave e-commerce team as we strive best to provide the best e-commerce solution to our business clients.

As you can see on the list, Sunzi, unfortunately, is not the first Paypal Certified Developer from Malaysia. Voon Chong has been a step quicker. Still, there’s only 2 Paypal Certified Developer in Malaysia so far and we know both of them!

okok. we better leave him alone for now as he’s busy working on Paypal Express Checkout, to be built into webShaper e-commerce – our de facto search engine friendly shopping cart software products!

Do you know Paypal is setting up their International Support (International means anything but US / UK) at Singapore?

So they are actually not too far from us in Malaysia. For those in johor, it’s even nearer. In the event Paypal block your account without any reasons, at least now you can take a cheap flight to Singapore and do something like this to them ( ;>

Disclaimer: We do not condone any violent act and we will NOT take responsibility for your “art work” as a result of reading this blog post. Bear in mind Singapore Cops are very efficient bunch.

Last but not least, we have news from paypal insider that Paypal might be able to supports withdrawals to Malaysia Business Bank Account in coming 6 ~ 9 months time (hopefully this time is for real…)! keep your finger crossed!

2Checkout, one of the payment gateways that works for local merchant selling internationally, has been supporting paypal since 2007.

Interestingly, Paypal appear more and more “Visa” and “Mastercard” like.  If their growth continue at such a fast-pace rate, especially in the International Markets, soon the below icon will become a standard at most of website that takes online payment. (i predict in 5 years time).

The apparent different is, with Paypal, you don’t actually need a card.

Don’t be surprised if you find Paypal in Malaysia Payment Gateways (Eg iPay88 & nbepay ) soon in not too distanced future (we hope).

Mom, i got shipped to you (in 1 piece) !!!

He/She will be a happy client that will buy repeatedly (and more!) from you. He/She will even help spread the word (WOM is powerful) around on how superb your service is, and leave a testimonial on your stores or a 5-star rating (we now have customer rating feature on webShaper!) on your products that will help you earn the trust for new visitors coming to your online store so that they will buy without hesitate. All these will have a positive impact that will ignite the money loop that will grow your business further and beat the competition!

5-star-rating from your clients – worth dying for

Now you understand how important fulfillment is. No online merchants can afford to screw up, or letting your shipping company screw up. and that’s why it’s important to pick your shipping partner right from the start. When it comes to the world of shipping, there’s also the very famous Big 3, namely UPS, Fedex and DHL. Among them, UPS is the indisputable big brother (more than 100 years old) among them all. UPS is so big that, if today UPS decide to quit delivery services and join the airlines business competing with AirAsia in the “business of shipping people”, they will be the 3rd largest airline in the world.

Just imagine all these planes turned into passengers plane…

An UPS truck delivery driver makes sure the packages in his truck are organized (we wonder, do they check on parcel bomb too?)

Sleeping with the enemy, You gotta be kidding me!

Study the competition, let the figure blows you away!

UPS is best known for its superb IT infrastructure and value-added services delivered via software tools. And we are proud to annouce that – webShaper e-commerce now supports UPS Tracking, UPS Rates & Services, UPS Address Verification (US Address only) as well as Shipping Label (Airway Bills) Printing directly from orders management in webShaper e-commerce! We are the first company in Malaysia (very likely in ASEAN) that does this,  for more details, take a look at UPS-Ready Shopping Cart.

Don’t miss out the nice cartoon clips by UPS below >

Hold on a second… before you leaving this post, another reason for you to sign up UPS service? Mamamiya… i’m sure they can easily double their account if every delivery employee look and dress like this!

But reality is always cruel

well… don’t lose the focus! Most important is your package get delivered in time and in good condition!

Happy selling online!

Satisfy your curiosity, learn more about UPS here!

How UPS Works

The making of a UPS driver

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/12/101008310/

U.P.S. Embraces High-Tech Delivery Methods

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/business/12ups.html

UPS and the art of sorting a million packages a day

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9974653-52.html?tag=nefd.riv

How UPS does Next-day-delivery?

http://news.cnet.com/2300-13576_3-6242193-1.html?tag=txt

How UPS Works

http://money.howstuffworks.com/ups.htm

To go shopping these days, more Americans are trading in their car keys for a keyboard.  

Online shopping is gaining at a time when simply filling up a gas tank to head to the mall can seem like a spending spree.

A number of retailers — including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites, creating a surprising bright spot during an otherwise gloomy time for sales in brick-and-mortar stores…

Read more here >>

Brit Embrace E-commerce

In UK, adoption of e-commerce is growing at the expense of high street shopping. According to the report, both top-end and low-end retailers are feeling the effects of the shift to internet shopping.

The online sales index from IMRG-Capgemini has discovered that 17p in every £1 spent by UK shoppers goes to internet retailers, with £26.5 million spent on the web in the first half of 2008…

Read more here >>

High Gas Fueling E-commerce

Research firm eMarketer has some good news for online retailers: high gas prices are fueling more Web shopping. In a July 25 report senior analyst Jeffrey Grau points to several consumer polls showing more shoppers are opting to spend online and save at the pump… Read more here >>

and for some people, this is how you suppose to “pay online with your credit cards”.

( Tips: If you sell online using webShaper, it could help you take in manual orders ( via Phone / Fax / Instant Messaging) )

For most of the small online store, you probably don’t have additional budget for a professional chat tool like this. But I guessed most of you do use MSN web Messenger or Yahoo Messenger (MSN now supports Yahoo ID too, vice versa).

Setup MSN web Chat on your Online Store Page

1) Logon to the URL below, sign in using your existing MSN messanger ID & Password.

http://settings.messenger.live.com/applications/WebSettings.aspx

2) Choose how you want to be seen on the web. You can allow anyone to see your status and send you messages. Or, you can limit access to certain websites.

3) Click on “Create HTML” on the left menu. You will reach a page where you can configure the Display Type (Either IM Window, Button or Icon), Size & Theme Color.

4) Once configure, just copy the HTML code generated for you at bottom page and paste it to your web page. As simple as that!

5) Sign-in to your MSN and see how it works! Start engaging your online visitors today (see below screen shots).  If you concern about privacy issue, you can always register a new msn live ID just for the business use!

If you like this post, don’t forget to bookmark it or have a link back to it! Thanks!

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