PayPal reveals ambition for deeper footprint in Thailand

The company recently set up a representative office and appointed its first country head for Thailand. 
Somwang Luangphaibooonsri, Paypal (Thailand)’s country head, said that his role is to take care of marketing of PayPal in Thailand. 
He said his mission is to expand PayPal so it reaches a lot more e-merchants in Thailand, across different business sizes and industries.
The benefit of PayPal having a local office in Thailand, Somwang said, is it allows the company to pay closer attention to customers. 
“Actually, PayPal’s system is well designed and developed to serve every single need of online merchants. Just sign on and login, merchants can get PayPal as their payment method. But [many] Thais need a touchable service offered by humans,” said Somwang.
Thailand is the third country where PayPal has set up a local office, following Singapore and Malaysia. In Southeast Asia, PayPal has a business footprint in six countries – the other three are Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. “PayPal’s payment transactions in Thailand in the last couple of years were very active. The transactions on PayPal’s platform increased to double digits, which is the reason why we have to be here to be closer to take care of customers,” said Somwang.
Apart from the active growth of PayPal in Thailand, a source in the industry said Somwang is one of the key reasons PayPal opened an office here. In Thailand, PayPal aims to penetrate small and medium-sized business, as well as large corporates who do online shopping targeting the global market. The company said it has 200 million accounts, mostly consumers who are potential buyers for Thai merchants. The global transaction value of Paypal is around US$10,900 per second (Bt377,000), the firm said.
The beauty of PayPal’s platform is it supports a lot of currency including the baht, the company said, adding that it is easy for merchants to do cross-border trading using the service.
“Local merchants can leave payment to us and stay focused on how to promote their products widely to the global market efficiently. We serve them currency on the spot in the local currency. And with PayPal’s risk management, including buyer protection and seller protection, it will help both buyer and seller be safe when using PayPal,” said Somwang.
Somwang said his teams included an account manager, relationship manager and technical support, with them taking care of customers according to the size of business across a multitude of industries. It also has dedicated teams to take care of platform owners such as those straddling the e-commerce sector. Moreover, he said he has set up teams to take care of channel partners such as bankers and online communities who have small merchants in their network. 
“We are one option payment for Thaitrade.com, an e-commerce platform operated by Department of International Trade Promotion,” said Somwang.
PayPal does not view other e-payment platforms as competitors since the e-payment industry in Thailand is just starting. There is more room for growth, he said, adding the high number of global e-payment players in the Thai market benefited the country. He said a key goal of PayPal is how to change consumer behaviour from using cash to adopting e-payment. His focus is to help both merchants and consumers have tools to do e-payments for cross-border online transactions. 
“A lot of global players coming into Thailand is good. Together we can help educate the market and drive the growth of e-payment usage in Thailand,” said Somwang. He said the tourism sector had high potential for PayPal, which will send teams to educate merchants in tourism-related businesses on the benefits of using digital payments for cross-border business.
The goal is not to focus on increasing the company’s e-payment market share but increasing the growth of its payment transactions, he said.
“Having local teams in Thailand will help PayPal’s performance get better. On the other hand, PayPal branding helping us easily approach merchants. We help merchants, especially small and medium business as well as individuals to understand PayPal’s business model better. We do not change them monthly or annual fees – they are charged only transaction fees,” said Somwang.
He said he wants PayPal to be a digital payment platform for online businesses who target the global market.