By NUR HAZIQAH A MALEK / Pic By MUHD AMIN NAHARUL

Payment gateway operator iPay88 Holding Sdn Bhd expects a sales volume of RM14 billion this year, contributed by over 104 million transactions through its channel.

ED Chan Kok Long (picture) said iPay88 expects a twofold growth in sales volume and transactions this year, thanks to the rising interest in e-commerce sector by consumers.

In 2018, iPay88 recorded a total of 52.45 million successful payment transactions totalling RM7 billion, versus the 28.7 million registered in the previous year.

Chan said mobile phones have been a key catalyst for the e-commerce’s growth over the past few years and businesses should look into enhancing their mobile experience and application performance.

“In total, 40.8 million transactions were successfully performed over mobile devices last year,” he told a media briefing yesterday.

“This further shows that smartphones were the preferred device among Malaysians to access the Internet,” he added.

Chan said online banking transactions had tripled against credit-card transactions in the fourth quarter of 2018, attributing to 13.8 million transactions versus 3.5 million via credit cards.

“Bank Negara Malaysia’s move to bring down the cost of online banking transactions in the last few years has definitely made online ban-king the preferred payment method for consumers.

“PFX (financial process exchange) is also fast becoming a preferred mode of payment,” he added.

According to iPay88’s data, food and beverage posted the highest sales volume growth last year versus 2017, registering 75% increase to RM44 million, followed by marketplace, which grew 71% to RM2 billion.

Meanwhile, Chan said facial recognition and biometrics are expected to play significant roles in the future of e-payment.

He said the technological trend should hit Malaysia soon, as its already prevalent in China, among other developed economies.

“It used to be paying by cash, and now the trend is shifting towards mobile commerce. It will not take too much time for the technology of biometrics to spill over into South-East Asia,” he added.

According to Chan, the current method of e-payment is multichannel, or multiple devices, but the future will be made omnichannel whereby all devices are connected to form Big Data and allow for seamless payment via facial recognition.

“As devices are growing stronger and faster, and also becoming smaller to accommodate, someday we might not even have to carry a device and our faces will be enough to buy things,” he said.

With the rise of e-wallet and e-payment, Chan said the question remains whether cash would remain the key payment method of trade.

“Besides that, with the technology we have and still developing, the rise of new retail such as online-to-offline (O2O) and unmanned stores will play a part to pave way for biometric technology,” he said.

Chan added that should O2O evolve as an opportunity, business-to-business will also transform to manufacturer- to-business-to-consumers.

“This will then emerge a direct channel between manufacturers to consumers,” he pointed out.