[melvinmt]

It's definitely super hard, but not impossible. You should read [1] how Rocket Internet expands in developing countries: they hire their own couriers who go out, deliver and take cash at the door. This way they solve both the distribution and the payment problem. This is similar to how many of China's biggest ecommerce players operate, they all have their own distribution/payments systems. If the infrastructure doesn't exist, you need to create it.

[1] http://thehustle.co/rocket-internet-oliver-samwer

[studentrob]

> they hire their own couriers who go out, deliver and take cash at the door

Yeah, that's what people in the US did before everyone had credit cards. Cash on delivery. Growing up, I remember hearing ads on TV that said "no COD" when that service was being phased out. More and more people were using credit cards.

You're right, many countries could use trusted couriers in order to spur local markets and economic growth.

Here in Taiwan you can have something sent to 7-11 or Family Mart and pay for it there. There are tons of these shops everywhere, and with the receipts lottery, the government guarantees it gets enough taxes even in a cash-based society. It's a pretty cool system and often feels funny how convenient 7-11s are here. In the US they're just a snack shop. Here you can have packages sent, do laundry, pay bills, ...

[ChuckMcM]

   > You're right, many countries could use trusted 
   > couriers in order to spur local markets and 
   > economic growth.

Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? You don't really want couriers that are carrying boxes of cash back to headquarters but it sounds like reducing friction in payment would achieve good results. Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment, and when that is received the courier hands over the item.

[studentrob]

> Ok, so that seems like the next startup right?

Sure. Any country that doesn't have the supporting infrastructure can be considered the next startup.

Cambodia doesn't have any public postal delivery workers, for example, so I think couriers or a system like Taiwan's with trusted shops could work well there and get more of an e-commerce market going.

There are some other hurdles there but I don't think it's insurmountable.

> Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment, and when that is received the courier hands over the item.

Was that rhetorical? You seem to have answered your own question. Anyway, yeah, SMS systems exist, and a little more legwork is required to make them successful. WING is one I remember seeing advertised there. I'm not sure how much it was used but I don't remember hearing about people buying things online too often. Technology doesn't do its own PR, unfortunately =)

One of the annoying things about Cambodia is delivery of packages from outside the country is so expensive. I think only DHL and UPS deliver there, and for a small box it can be $100+ from the US. If a more competitive local delivery system were implemented first within Cambodia, then I imagine that cost could come down, marking more wins for the purchasing power of locals there.

[ChuckMcM]

Every place is different, the GP was talking about Indonesia where the folks were in fact shopping online and the challenge was the payments system. In Cambodia with poor package delivery then that might be the place to start. What I was alluding too is that one of the things that makes startups successful is that they seem to be "right place, right time" but sometimes it is simply that they are designed to mesh well with an existing infrastructure.

The trick here is to take something which is is known to work and try to think about what changes would make that thing work where you are. In a country where everyone has a smartphone, you can look at things that you can do with a smartphone you couldn't do with a 'dumb' phone. In a country where there are extremely inefficient transport, mail, or payment systems, then working within what you can there can be a winner.

[studentrob]

> Every place is different

Totally.

> they seem to be "right place, right time" but sometimes it is simply that they are designed to mesh well with an existing infrastructure

Mmm there can be other elements such as "right person" and "right way to solve the problem". Sometimes the keys to success aren't easily condensed into soundbytes, so they aren't widely known. Air B&B wasn't the first home sharing website, but there were probably some ingredients in their secret sauce that fall under the HN definition of "execution". We don't know all of those ingredients, but they differentiated Air B&B from the pack.

So, I'd argue there is a right solution for Cambodia's e-commerce, and any problem really. It may not become a billion dollar company, but there is a way to make it profitable. There simply is not a model that's easily copyable from the US. Conditions are very different. There are definitely people working on this problem. Adoption rates appear slow to me. Time will tell when they're successful.

> The trick here is to take something which is is known to work and try to think about what changes would make that thing work where you are

Yeah we are in agreement.

[sysreader2016]

An SMS payment system doesn't seem possible. Just end-to-end encryption for SMS will be much be bigger than a Facebook app. Without encryption consumers will be conducting wire transfers over cleartext to the merchant.

[ChuckMcM]

Here is a good summary of SMS payments : http://www.mobiletransaction.org/what-are-sms-payments/

They are used a lot in countries with dysfunctional banking systems. They aren't encrypted, they use the fact that you're sending a text from your phone to validate that it's you.

[gexla]

Which brings up a caveat that I didn't mention. If you want to hit the Philippines market, you probably don't need to go much further than Manila and Cebu. Manila could be among the top 5 largest cities in the world soon. Couriers could work in this case, assuming they could get through the insane traffic. But with wages so low here, you could employ an army of them.