Public, private sectors ‘should work together’ on e-payment

Pauline Sahetapy, vice president of the Visa School of Public Policy, said yesterday that driven by new technology, forms of payment were evolving from traditional to new ways such as paying by credit or debit cards, mobile phones, wearable devices and the Internet of Things.
The process of educating consumers, merchants and their clients on e-payment appears to be insufficient. To accelerate this development, Sahetapy said government agencies and private companies should engage with this process to move it forward. For example, government can help through the use of policy, regulations and financial incentives.
She suggested that a regulatory framework encouraging open access and competition would achieve desired regulatory outcomes while partnership with industry could improve regulatory execution and reduce the risk of unintended consequences.
This advice, if followed, would seem to be beneficial for Thailand. Moody’s Analytics found that the increased use of electronic payments, including credit, debit and prepaid cards, added US$3.18 billion (about Bt113 billion) or 0.19 per cent to Thailand’s gross domestic product from 2011 to 2015, the largest weighted average increase in Asia.
That growth was triple that of the regional average increase of 0.06 per cent of GDP, with Vietnam following Thailand at 0.14 per cent and Singapore at 0.1 per cent. Increased e-payment usage also created the equivalent of an average of 75,730 jobs in Thailand per year in the same period.
Suripong Tantiyanon, country manager of Visa International (Thailand), said these findings reinforced the many positive benefits that electronic payments bring to economies, not just in Thailand but all over the world.
This research also suggested that the right public policies could create an open, competitive payment environment, and contribute to economic growth and job creation.
In another development, Thailand’s online trade this year is expected to grow 20 per cent to Bt240 billion from Bt200 billion in 2015 because of the substantial movement from the fourth-generation wireless network, large retailers venturing into online business, and the government’s National E-Payment Programme, according to Kasikornbank, a big player in mobile banking.
Noppawan Jermhansa, executive vice president of KBank, said the trend would lead to a “mobile commerce” society, so the bank has developed strategies for online marketing and sales promotions via four products as payment channels. These are the K-Credit Card, K-Debit Card, digital banking (K-Mobile Banking), and K-Payment Gateway.
KBank’s digital banking at present has 9 million customers, whose transactions totalled Bt3.9 trillion last year. The key strategy is to roll out new application features that allow users to personalise the app to their liking, making their smartphone the only device they need for all kinds of financial transactions.
The bank expects to add 3.4 million more customers to its digital-banking base this year.
To support e-commerce entrepreneurs, the KBank says it focuses on developing tools to improve the efficiency of digital payment platforms, ensuring customers that the various payment channels are convenient and high-powered.