Filipino SMEs Expansion Opportunities Through Cross-border Trade - Paypal

MANILA, Philippines – A growing cross-border e-marketplace in Asia Pacific is a signal for Filipino SMEs to consider taking their products and services abroad, according to PayPal.

The global leader in digital payments and Ipsos recently released the 2018 PayPal Cross-Border Consumer Research, which investigates the online shopping habits of approximately 34,000 consumers in 31 countries [1]— including the Philippines. It reveals a growing cross-border e-commerce scene, with the US and China being the biggest markets in terms of online spend.

According to the study, there is a healthy appetite for e-commerce in APAC, with 48 percent of consumers shopping cross-border in the last 12 months. “This is a huge opportunity for local entrepreneurs to expand their businesses beyond the Philippines. China, in particular, shows significant promise as the Philippines improves its bilateral relations with the world’s second largest economy,” said Abhinav Kumar, Head of Strategic Partnerships for PayPal in Southeast Asia.  

China, the largest market for online purchases in the world, spent an estimated total of RMB 3.9 trillion for online transactions in 2017. This is projected to increase to RMB 5.4 trillion in 2018. Cross-border trade (buying from a website not in their own country) is increasing with 43 percent of Chinese consumers shopping cross-border in the last 12 months compared to 26 percent the previous year.

APAC countries like Australia, India and Japan are likewise growing fast. For 2018, the PayPal study projects Japan to increase its total online spend by 26 percent, India by 53 percent, and Australia by 19 percent.

Cross-border opportunities for Filipino merchants

The digital upheaval brought about by social media and increased smartphone penetration translate to increased opportunities for cross-border trade, as seen by the projected growth in online spending. The world has become much smaller as platforms like PayPal enable merchants to take advantage of opportunities by connecting them with global consumers, allowing SMEs and micro enterprises more opportunities to thrive.

According to the study, the top few reasons for the growth in cross-border shopping can be attributed to the novelty of accessing items that are not available in their own country (49 percent) or to discover new and interesting products (34 percent). Over 30 percent of consumers from China and Australia who shop online cite finding items that are hard to find locally as a reason for making them more likely to shop cross-border.

“The demand for unique products is there, and this is an opportunity for Filipino businesses to showcase products not available elsewhere. The Philippines produces many unique products thanks to its rich culture, and with e-commerce, local merchants can now bring uniquely Filipino products to the world,” said Kumar.

Cosmetics on the rise for APAC consumers

As more and more Asian nations become more open to cross-border trade, Filipino businesses should be mindful of what consumers are buying to be able to take full advantage.

Globally, fashion, such as clothing, footwear and accessories, remain the top category for online shopping, with 68 percent of cross-border online shoppers having spent on these items in the past 12 months.

While APAC shoppers are forecasted to be spending more online in 2018, buying behaviors are also changing. Survey results showed that Chinese consumers are turning their attention to spending on things for health and beauty as well as their children, with online spending on cosmetics and baby supplies predicted to increase by 21 and 31 percent, respectively, in 2018. In India, online spending on the same categories are forecasted to increase by 40 and 37 percent, respectively. Consumer electronics is also another growth category in APAC, with online spending in the category expected to grow by 40 percent in India, 20 percent in China, and 13 percent in Australia.

Security a key driver of cross-border trade

Despite the increasing popularity of international online shopping among consumers across the globe, challenges to cross-border shopping remain. Barriers vary from region to region. Over a third (38 percent) of all online shoppers say that having a more secure way to pay would make them more likely to shop internationally.

In order for Filipino merchants to take full advantage of the expected increase in online spend, they need to address these barriers to encourage overseas purchases. With PayPal, they can connect to international consumers via a secure, seamless, and hassle-free network.

“At PayPal, we understand that while more and more people shop online, the hassle of online payments can be a barrier. PayPal addresses those concerns through a more convenient and more secure online payment facility for consumers to buy the things they need and love. As Filipino businesses take their cross-border sales online, we are proud to empower people and businesses to join and thrive in the global economy,” added Kumar.

PayPal endeavours to bring a sense of security to online shoppers with Refunded Returns (terms and limitations apply). In addition to Refunded Returns, PayPal offers Buyer Protection for eligible transactions to help provide a greater peace of mind for online shoppers. This protection goes both ways as merchants can be protected against eligible fraudulent transactions with Seller Protection.

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Brave New World - Artificial Intelligence Impact on Work and Jobs

Brave New World – How AI Will Impact Work and Jobs

There’s no doubt that the advent of broadly-available Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers businesses the prospect of increased productivity and accelerated innovation, whilst also enabling society to help solve some of its toughest - and most persistent – challenges: disease, famine, climate control and natural disasters.

AI is already delivering tangible economic benefits for many organisations across Asia Pacific. For example, leading global container shipping company OOCL reports that applying AI to their business is already saving them $10m annually, whilst Apollo Hospitals in India are using AI to help predict heart disease amongst its patients.

While the benefits of Artificial Intelligence are undeniable, AI is a disrupter, especially when it comes to the displacement of jobs. The ramifications of AI on the workforce is a regular topic of discussion among CEOs and government leaders across Asia Pacific.

That said, it is also pertinent to examine the far-reaching implication that AI brings to the workforce. Will the social disruptions that AI can potentially create ultimately overshadow its benefits?

The Evolution of Jobs in the AI-Shaped Future
To put things in perspective: large-scale disruption is a challenge with every industrial revolution. Technology will always have profound implications on the creation, elimination, or evolution of jobs. For example, just a few years ago, it was common for offices to have a pool of typists. Clearly, this role is no longer relevant in today’s modern office, thanks to the proliferation of personal computing. The advent of AI will reshape jobs in a similar way.

Microsoft recently partnered with the leading technology advisory firm IDC to assess the digital transformation landscape across the region. Titled “Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital Transformation in Asia Pacific”, the study surveyed 1,560 business and IT leaders from 15 Asia Pacific economies[i]. It showed that 85% of jobs in Asia Pacific will be transformed in the next three years. (See chart below)

Diving deeper into the results, the respondents said that over 50% of jobs will be redeployed to a new position and/or retrained and upskilled for digital transformation. What’s interesting is that the Study shows that 26% of jobs will be newly created roles from digital transformation, which will offset the 27% of jobs that will he outsourced or automated. In other words, the overall workforce effect will be broadly neutral.

These are clear indications that how businesses organize work, how people find employment and the skills people need to prepare for the workforce are changing dramatically. These changes are likely to accelerate in the decade ahead.

As AI continues to transform the nature of work, education, skills, and training will have to transform as well in order to ensure that people are prepared for the jobs of the future and businesses have access to the talent they need to succeed. And as traditional models of employment transform, there will be a need to modernize legal frameworks to recognize new ways of working, provide adequate worker protections, and maintain social safety nets.

Building a Better Future Together

The recently published, ‘The Future Computed, Artificial Intelligence and its Role in Society’, makes sense of this AI conundrum as it offers three conclusions on AI and the impact on work and jobs:.

Photo of a stack of books entitled "The Future Computed"

(You can download the book here for free today).

First, the organizations and countries that will fare best in the AI race will be early adopters. The reason is straightforward: AI will be useful wherever intelligence is needed and it helps us to be more productive in nearly every field of human endeavor, which can lead to economic growth. Put simply, new jobs and economic progress will favor those that embrace the technology, not those that resist it.

Second, while AI will help improve daily life in many ways and help solve big societal problems, its important to remain critical when examining the issues that it can bring. Beyond AI deployment, what’s equally important is to prepare society and the workforce for the impending changes that AI will catalyze by addressing the need for strong ethical principles, the evolution of laws, the importance of training for new skills, and even labor market reforms. These aspects must all come together in order to make the most of this new technology.

Third, to fully realize the benefits of AI, and to minimize the negative outcomes, technology companies, private and public organizations need to come together with a sense of shared responsibility -- AI must be democratized.

The AI building blocks that Microsoft is developing today, such as computer vision, speech, and knowledge recognition, should be made available to all so that they can create their own AI-based solutions. AI should not be controlled by just a few organizations. The AI future should be built by everyone with a vision on how AI can benefit economies and societies as well as how we can tackle AI issues and their implications.

The future of AI can burn brightly or dimly. Disruption is a norm, and the ability to adapt to disruptions is what defines all of us. And to adapt to the fast-approaching, rapidly evolving AI future, all parties – from workers to enterprises to governments - will need to spend more time listening to each other, collaborate and constantly learn new knowledge and skills.

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FortiGuard Labs On Evolving Threat Trends in Cybersecurity for 2016

Fortinet® global leader in high performance cybersecurity solutions – and its threat research division, FortiGuard Labs, have made their annual predictions of the most significant trends in malware and network security going into 2016 with their New Rules: The Evolving Threat Landscape in 2016 report revealing the new trends and strategies that FortiGuard researchers anticipate cyber criminals to arm their customers with the knowledge that they need to maintain their advantage in the cybersecurity arms race and proactively change the way all businesses look at their security strategies going into the new year.

The top cybersecurity trends for 2016 includes Increased M2M Attacks and Propagation Between Devices, Worms and Viruses Designed to Specifically Attack IoT Devices, Attacks On Cloud and Virtualized Infrastructure, New Techniques That Thwart Forensic Investigations and Hide Evidence of Attacks, Malware That Can Evade Even Advanced Sandboxing Technologies.

FortiGuard researchers anticipate that IoT will become central to “land and expand” attacks in which hackers will take advantage of vulnerabilities in connected consumer devices to get a foothold within the corporate networks and hardware to which they connect. They expect to see further development of exploits and malware that target trusted communication protocols between these devices. There will be a magnitude of damage from worms and viruses when they can propagate among millions or billions of devices from wearables to medical hardware.

There is also potential threat for malware to escape from a hypervisor and access the host operating system in a virtualized environment as exemplified by Venom vulnerability. With growing reliance on virtualization and both private and hybrid clouds as well as with most many apps access cloud-based systems, cybercriminals will definitely target this for gain.

Rombertik garnered significant attention in 2015 as one of the first major pieces in the wild as a “blastware” designed to destroy or disable a system when it is detected. Another type is “ghostware” where it is designed to erase the indicators of compromise that security systems are designed to detect making it very difficult for organizations to track the extent of data loss associated with an attack.

Two-faced malware, though, behaves normally while under inspection but then delivers a malicious payload once it has been passed by the sandbox which can be challenging to detect but can also interfere with threat intelligence mechanisms that rely on sandbox rating systems.

Each of these trends represents a significant and novel challenge for both organizations deploying security solutions and for vendors developing them. Fortinet is on the cutting edge of threat research and network security, providing complete network protection from edge to endpoint, continuously updated by FortiGuard and the threat intelligence feeds from millions of devices deployed worldwide. 

As Derek Manky, global security strategist for Fortinet explained, “FortiGuard Labs was formed over a decade ago to monitor and detect the latest threats, zero days, and emerging malware to provide the best possible protection for our customers. We leverage our incredible visibility into the global threat landscape to develop actionable threat intelligence, allowing us to respond quickly to new threats.” 

Ken Xie, Fortinet founder and CEO, also noted that “As we look ahead at the threats associated with our increasing connectedness and the proliferation of new devices, Fortinet is committed to delivering uncompromising security and further enhancing our solutions to meet both the current and future needs of our customers.”  

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