[tomeric]

This is not exclusive to Kuwait. I've seen several of these kinds of storefronts all over South East Asia. People use an app like "Line" to order stuff and communicate payment options . It's really interesting to see how people use social networking in unintended ways.

Most of the stuff that is sold is relatively cheap (< 15$), but trust is still a big problem. In my time there, I always wondered if it would be worthwhile for Facebook to facilitate this by for instance handling the payments, but I don't even know if they knew about this kind of stuff happening.

[nandemo]

Can you give an example of a country in SE Asia where that sort of commerce is common? I'd have thought that people would opt to use one of the e-commerce platforms, since they provide payment and anti-fraud solutions.

[edwinnathaniel]

Indonesia (and probably Malaysia).

Anti-fraud for e-Commerce is a long way to go. Most people still transfer money via bank using SMS (and they take screenshot of their cellphone for proofs to the seller).

Twitter, Instagram, Line, BBM, WhatsApp, and Facebook are being used for eCommerce.

Most of their customers won't mind if they were "tagged" (in Facebook) by sellers while westerners would complain like there's no tomorrow (and unfriended their friends if the sellers were their friends).

I'm just in awe to see how SE Asia countries are using social media.

[esusatyo]

As an Indonesian, I can concur.

PayPal, etsy, and eBay is like a disease over there. No one wants to deal with third party eCommerce platform. I don't know whether it is because of the cost or other things.

What I know is you can not scale verification of bank transfers once it reaches a certain number.