Mideast online shopping growth in focus
Dubai, May 20, 2014
The exponential growth of online shopping in the Middle East will be the main theme of an upcoming summit in Dubai.
The ArabNet Digital Summit 2014, which will be held from June 3 to 5 at the Atlantis the Palm, will explore the latest e-commerce trends including e-retail, e-grocery, global e-commerce and Bitcoin as an emerging payment method.
About 30 million people in the Middle East are shopping online and the market is expected to grow to $15 billion by 2015, according to PayPal Insights e-commerce in the Middle East 2012-15.
A prominent regional success is online mass merchant Souq.com, that has recently raised a total of $150 million in investments and plans to use the funds to deliver the first billion-dollar Arab internet company.
Some of the challenges facing e-merchants have been payment, where 70 to 80 per cent of online shoppers in the Middle East choose ‘cash on delivery’ as a preferred payment method, said the report.
One of the region’s key online payment service providers, PayFort has implemented a zero security deposit on transactions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as a new feature to support the growth of the industry in the region, it said.
The topics to be discussed at the summit include what it takes to build a global e-commerce business, with lessons learned from the region and beyond; and the region’s payment landscape in PayFort’s latest report on ‘The State of Online Payment.’
The summit will also feature a panel discussion on the disruptive potential of Bitcoin as an emerging payment method.
It will also include Ad+Tech Academy, a full day of workshops on digital, social, mobile, and video advertising.
The summit is set to convene more than 1,000 executives, investors, entrepreneurs, and media from across the globe and more than 130 speakers will discuss the latest digital opportunities shaping the Arab digital industry. - TradeArabia News Service
