Exploring E-commerce Activity in Malaysia: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

An economy in which goods and services are produced electronically, sold and bought electronically, and all the supporting transactions of this electronic business are done electronic could be termed as Digital Economy. Governments around the world are making policies to transform their economies into digital economies, Malaysian government among the aspirers has been pushing hard to transform Malaysia into a digital economy. With multibillion dollar projects such as Multimedia Super Corridor, National Broadband Initiative, and sufficient financial support in five yearly plans, Malaysian government is hoping to transform Malaysia into a knowledge economy and realize the vision to be a fully developed country by 2020. The most important aspect of Digital Economy is E-commerce, it is for this reason this paper look at the E-commerce activity in Malaysia, E-commerce is highly dependent on E-finance, so any discussion on E-commerce is not complete without analyzing E-finance, this paper also looks at the E-finance industry in Malaysia. Previous studies on the topic of E-commerce in Malaysia lack one important aspect that is local content related to E-commerce. This study is an attempt to fill this gap. E-commerce has started flourishing but still it is at an infant stage, there are local companies but very few. Growth is dependent on an excellent ICT infrastructure, access to online services, awareness of E-commerce, broadband maturity. There is enough room for local entrepreneurs to start offering E-commerce services; awareness about ICT based entrepreneurship is also required.

Keywords: Digital Economy, E-commerce, E-finance, Malaysia, Local content.