Facebook, WhatsApp top social commerce enablers in India: Paypal report

Social networking site Facebook and its messaging app Whatsapp are among the top platforms for merchants to sell their goods and services.

"About 89 per cent of merchants use Facebook and 83 per cent use Whatsapp as the social business platforms in India," according to Paypal report titled ‘Beyond Networking: Social Commerce as a Driver of Digital Payments’.

Facebook Messenger was chosen by almost 69 per cent whereas Instagram as a social commerce platform has just begun its journey. Indonesia and Phillippines are two markets who saw the adoption of Facebook more than 90 per cent.

The rise of the new economy is giving way to the next big shift in commerce, social commerce. The grwoing ease of conducting commerce is opening up a range of economic opportunites for every member of the community. This is just a beggining, said Rohan Mahadevan, Paypal, APAC.

For the sell of good and services, India also witnessed top usage of YouTube (64%), Twitter (61%), Google+ (50%), Skype (53%) and LinkedIn (33%).

On the reasons for selling on social media, more than 96 per cent of merchants gave credit for the growth of the business to low overhead costs of social commerce. In India, 66 percent of merchants found it is easy to reach to a wider group of customers through social media whereas 48 percent said they can leverage their network of friends and relatives.

The trend might witness increase usage of social media for commerce in future, the report added.

The growth of social commerce is also fuelling the adoption of digital payments. While there is just 1 per cent cash payment got accepted, over 15 per cent of merchants use new methods of digital payment to facilitate commerce transactions.

The survey was conducted with around 4000 consumers and 1400 merchants across seven markets in Asia, which included India, Thailand, China, Hongkong, Phillippines, Indonesia and Singapore.