Globally, PayPal is the dominant online payment solution. Often, you aren’t an online merchant if you don’t have an option for users to pay for your goods via PayPal.
But in Asia, PayPal’s not the only kid in the online payment neighborhood. In fact, over the years, numerous alternatives have sprung up in the region, sometimes even beating the payment giant in market share in their respective countries.
Furthermore, in emerging markets, ubiquitous Internet services are not always readily available, which means over-the-counter payment remains popular in those places.
So, if you’re an entrepreneur keen on regional or global expansion, understanding the market and the key players is an important first step. To help you, we’ve compiled this constantly-updated list to keep you abreast of the latest developments in Asia. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, Mobile, Technology, WebTags: 99Bill, Alipay, chinapay, E-Commerce, m - commerce, mobile payment, MOL, online payment, online payment gateway, paydollar, paysbuy, swiff, tenpay
The TWIA crew is back this week with a laser focus on acquisitions that are spreading across Asia, with Transfer-To and Unoh being the biggest beneficiaries, and what’s more with Temasek investing in Tudou, one of the top video sharing sites in China. Of course, we celebrated the final end of Friendster as the company MOL who acquired them, sold the set of social networing patents to Facebook with an exclusive deal of distributing FB credits in Southeast Asia. If you think that news of that nature, what about hearing our friend and guest on the show, Brian Wong has successfully gotten venture capital of $200K with Tru Ventures for his new company Kiip.me and, also possibly one of the youngest entrepreneurs funded in Silicon Valley. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Facebook, Friendster, Kiip.me, MOL, Open Web Asia, OWASEA, Temasek Holdings, This Week in Asia, Tru Ventures, Tudou, TWIA, Unoh, Zynga
Starting off with congrats to Mike Foong with his 4th kid, Myra Ines Foong, the TWIA crew is back to discuss the interesting stories that dominate the Asian mobile, web & tech landscape this week. While we look back at Open Web Asia Conference & Google Dev Fest in KL, we also discussed interesting stories covering from iPads selling out in Singapore to an Asian company called Bubble Motion funded by Sequoia and how it’s kicking ass in India. If you are not impressed, then the gaffe from MOL CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah on his rival OffGamers’ FB page surely hits the most entertaining story of the week in Asia. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Bubble Motion, Bubbly, Facebook, Friendster, Google Dev Fest, MOL, OffGamers, Open Web Asia, Sequoia, This Week in Asia, TWIA
Gen Kanai, Director of Asia Business Development from Mozilla Corporation joins the TWIA crew as the guest to discuss the Google Showdown with the China government on unfiltered search & censorship and examine the implications of foreign companies entering into the Chinese market. The TWIA crew and Gen Kanai continue to discuss the recent Yahoo! Friendster partnership in Southeast Asia and an exciting discussion about the security of mobile banking in Korea and how that ties up with browsers, search engines and security protocols in East Asia. Read more
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Filed under Media, Technology, WebTags: Blog a Trend, Firefox, Friendster, Gen Kanai, Google, Google China, Gree, HP, HP The Future Is, Internet, Japan, Korea, Mixi, Mobage Town, MOL, Mozilla, Samsung, security, SEED Protocol, Social Networks, This Week in Asia, Yahoo
The TWIA crew is back without Mike Foong this week. We glanced through the recent BlackBerry Bold 9700 launch by RIM in Singapore, where BL has an “embarassing” encounter with Denise Keller, from MTV Asia. After that short and funny anecdote, the crew discussed the follow up to the Friendster acquisition by MOL Global last week to exactly how much they are being priced, with the mobile social networking platform, Mozat raising Series A Funding From JAFCO Asia and the entrance of India’s GupShup into the Southeast Asia market. Finally, the crew looks at the implications of Internet Filtering and Censorship in Australia based on the “CleanFeed” trial. Read more
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Filed under Media, Mobile, Technology, WebTags: Australia, Blackberry, Blackberry Apps World, CleanFeed, Denise Keller, Foyage, Friendster, Golden Village, Mig33, MOL, Mozat, This Week in Asia
With two major news that rocked the Southeast Asia markets this week from the acquisition of Friendster by MOL to the emergence of the JooJoo netbook, the crew is left reeling the implications of the events. We also have David Lian, who joined us as our special guest as we run through our stories in TWIA. You can check out the podcast directly from here. Read more
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Filed under Innovation & Technology, Media, WebTags: 2C2P, AiNET, CrunchPad, Eteract, Friendster, HomeCamera, iMatch, JooJoo, Mike Arrington, MOL, Nokia, Nokia N900, Online Gaming, PayPal, TechCrunch, TenCube, This Week in Asia, TWIA
Reporting from the shores across our causeway, BL (our editor) has travelled to Kuala Lumpur this morning to attend Barcamp Malaysia 2008. He is not the only one, as this event has attracted many Singaporeans to turn up there: the entire team from Widgeous (Ridzuan and U-Zyn), Mohan from E27, Ben Koe, Kelvin Quee, Preetam and Wong Meng Weng (a Singaporean entrepreneur who came back from Silicon Valley). Here are some of the highlights for the event with a short review and pictures from the event. Read more
