"Few e-commerce specialist investors in Europe seem to be waking up to the mind-boggling potential of e-commerce in Southeast Asia, at least beyond Singapore."
That's because there are huge barriers to overcome for e-commerce in Thailand.
1. Lack of access to bank cards and credit cards that work online. Most people bank here with paper books. This is why 7-Eleven pay (cash for vouchers that work online) and other offline solutions have taken off.
2. People don't trust banks, the sellers and most importantly the Thai postal service to get the item to them. Sure you could use private couriers, but they are prohibitively expensive.
3. It's hard for Companies to find payment processors. Paypal operate in Thailand but are more stringent that other countries because of the fraud that goes on here.
I think the real problem is more of that people hates fees. Any kind of fee, no matter how small it is. That's why most Facebook/Instagram stores in Thailand always have at least 2-3 bank accounts for the buyer to pay to, each from different banks. Inter-bank transfer cost from 25 THB to 35 THB (about $1) depends on bank and amount while same-bank transfer is free.
This fact plus how hard it is to get payment processor to talk to you is really hurting the credit card adoption rate, despite acquiring a card is very easy here in Thailand (I have 5, 3 of which they ask me to have one). For example, K-Bank Payment Gateway requires you to sign lengthy documentation and need to pay them 200,000 THB ($6,500) as a reserve fund and still require redirection to the bank website to make payments (with 3DS, success auth callbacks and all.)
Using PayPal is possible, but transferring money from PayPal to bank account here still isn't very straightforward. It involves either cheque, or routing the money through BBL NYK, each with its own set of fees. I'm not sure if this has changed because it has been a while since I used PayPal to accept payments, but for social network merchant it is still a hassle.
In Thailand (and Vietnam) there is http://get.page365.net/ who tries to tackle this problem about managing social network stores and payments. I've heard a lot of their successful stories, which may implies there's still a lot of opportunities in this market. (Disclosure: one of their founder is my close friend.)
As a foreigner with a new company in Thailand (and a couple of companies setup around the same time in Australia too) I don't think the banks specifically are the problem.
It's a lot of f*cking around to get a merchant account in Australia too - it's only because of newer payment providers like Stripe and Pin (AU only) who don't require a merchant account, that it's feasible for a small bootstrapped company to consider accepting credit card payments in Australia.
Here in Thailand it seems there is much less demand for online services, so there has been much less pressure/incentive for innovation in the payments space.
Omise are a reasonably new player (similar concept to Stripe or Pin), and seem to be tackling this gap in the market, however I'm not sure how fast they're taking off. I'm still waiting for USD support (I want to be able to charge foreign clients in a known currency) but no specific word yet on when it will be available.
Personally, I believe this is a chicken and egg problem. Lack of a good way to accept online payment is partly the reason why online services here couldn't take off as fast as they should, and that in turn caused the lack of pressure for innovation in the space you speak of.
However, with the recent stories of Ookbee and Stock Radars, or even how Uber becoming a real threat to Taxis, I'm sure the demand is only growing larger and larger, even more so now that prepaid cards are really easy to get (you can buy one at 7-11). If the payment experience is good enough that it increase sales, people might eventually quit bothering about the fees. So to me, the missing link right now seems to be a payment gateway.
I have been working with Omise under contract for a while (I'm omise-python[1] maintainer). I'm not sure to what extent I'm allowed to speak about the plans, so I can't really answer your question (sorry). In my opinion, I'm really glad that Omise is tackling the payment gateway problem. Especially how nearly all other players in Thailand require redirection to their payment page to accept payment (some even require successful redirect back to merchant's callback url to finish a transaction) having someone who say "you hate that redirect? we too!" is really reassuring.
To me this looks like an organic extension of how Thai people go about engaging retail and service industries. This is a country where you step out your door and there are street carts soliciting you with every product and service you could want. This is taking that type of p2p business interaction which Thai people are comfortable with and expect and moving it to the internet.
My cousin showed me over Christmas what this scene looks like. There's a bustling market on Instagram of "glassheads" buying and selling wares under pseudonyms. It's super interesting, and people are spending a lot of money. Obviously transactions take place offsite, but instagram is entirely the conduit.
Essentially. "Bongs for dabs" has been the most thriving sector of the artistic glass market for several years now. The tag #glassofig is a good place to start for anyone interested in checking out the artistic glass smokeware and jewelry market on Instagram.
The majority of borosilicate flameworking artists are independent and Facebook and Instagram are important to most people's marketing, if not sales. Some people make a living solely from selling on Instagram. Payment is a problem in this market, as pipes are forbidden by PayPal and other processors, despite being sold in all 50 states and being without question of legality in many.
Instagram is used a lot to promote similar products in Turkey as well. In fact people try to create popular accounts and get advertisements for different products. I see promotions so often in some comic accounts I follow, bothers me sometimes.
I'm not convinced "social media e-commerce" is a better way to sell.
Blurring the lines between commerce and friendship creates false assumptions of trustworthiness.
I've witnessed people walk into stores demanding discounts they saw on unofficial social media merchant accounts. Needless to say no sale was made and both parties were worse off.
Ordering something as simple as a Raspberry Pi was a tedious process involving several emails and a walk to the bank. Very personal and yet utterly inefficient for everyone involved.
There might be a great demand for a user friendly e-commerce app here.
Online credit card payments are not ubiquitous or well supported in Thailand.
When we first got here, my wife couldn't pay our phone+internet bill (using the third largest telecom in the country) online, because they need to whitelist card numbers on accounts because of fraud (or so we were told).
When we tried it once with my (then) Australian Visa card, it failed miserably and the app dumped out a PHP stack trace in its web view with a SCARY amount of information exposed to me.
Even things like using a banks' "Pay Bill" feature is apparently not reliable here, because payments somehow don't turn up in a timely fashion or they don't know they've arrived or something.
People do what they're comfortable with and what they know - just like how staff always ask for a signature on the bottom of a credit card slip that clearly says "signature not required" because I used a PIN.
That's because there are huge barriers to overcome for e-commerce in Thailand.
1. Lack of access to bank cards and credit cards that work online. Most people bank here with paper books. This is why 7-Eleven pay (cash for vouchers that work online) and other offline solutions have taken off.
2. People don't trust banks, the sellers and most importantly the Thai postal service to get the item to them. Sure you could use private couriers, but they are prohibitively expensive.
3. It's hard for Companies to find payment processors. Paypal operate in Thailand but are more stringent that other countries because of the fraud that goes on here.