Building more on the hype from Apple Pay's user acquisition data, over 2 million people registered their credit card on their new iPhone6, I was intrigue to look back at my home country, Thailand, to see where it is on development of digital/mobile payment.
The iPhone6 was just launch beginning of this month (November) and sales were going like crazy, but unlike in the US, where people are somewhat excited about the Apple Pay, Thai people does not seem to give much attention to this feature. I am sad to say that we are so lagging behind on this global trend. In September, VISA (Thailand) announced that they will introduce a revolution contact-less payment method to capitalise the growth of digital payment in Thailand. When I read the news in detail, the payment method they referred to was actually NFC (near-field communication) technology on Android, a feature that was known to the world and Android users for as long as I can remember.
On the other hand, the fact that the country is quite new to the whole idea of mobile payment, it is a great opportunity for companies such as Visa to jump into the market. Visa provides Visa PayWave contactless payment now using plastic cards issue by four of the country's leading financial institutions. The company has 300,000 PayWave card holders and 5,000 contactless card reader nationwide. (Note Thailand has approximately 65 million population). The company also reveal further that Thailand is the world's fastest growing market for PayWave. The transaction in August 2014 was up 155% YoY.
Bank of Thailand and World Bank statistics shows the country's card payments for credit, debit cards and ecommerce were worth around 1 trillion Baht (~30 Baht/USD) in 2013, which accounts for 17% of total payments. Visa survey also shows that high percentage of Thai people interviewed prefer contactless payment, even over wearable devices. It seems that there is real opportunity here and entrepreneur and companies should come up with alternative way such as mobile credit card reader, like Square, to ease local vendors card transactions.
The iPhone6 was just launch beginning of this month (November) and sales were going like crazy, but unlike in the US, where people are somewhat excited about the Apple Pay, Thai people does not seem to give much attention to this feature. I am sad to say that we are so lagging behind on this global trend. In September, VISA (Thailand) announced that they will introduce a revolution contact-less payment method to capitalise the growth of digital payment in Thailand. When I read the news in detail, the payment method they referred to was actually NFC (near-field communication) technology on Android, a feature that was known to the world and Android users for as long as I can remember.
On the other hand, the fact that the country is quite new to the whole idea of mobile payment, it is a great opportunity for companies such as Visa to jump into the market. Visa provides Visa PayWave contactless payment now using plastic cards issue by four of the country's leading financial institutions. The company has 300,000 PayWave card holders and 5,000 contactless card reader nationwide. (Note Thailand has approximately 65 million population). The company also reveal further that Thailand is the world's fastest growing market for PayWave. The transaction in August 2014 was up 155% YoY.
Bank of Thailand and World Bank statistics shows the country's card payments for credit, debit cards and ecommerce were worth around 1 trillion Baht (~30 Baht/USD) in 2013, which accounts for 17% of total payments. Visa survey also shows that high percentage of Thai people interviewed prefer contactless payment, even over wearable devices. It seems that there is real opportunity here and entrepreneur and companies should come up with alternative way such as mobile credit card reader, like Square, to ease local vendors card transactions.
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