The social commerce market is already price greater than $13 billion in Southeast Asia, however the checkout course of is crammed with friction. Many sellers don’t have on-line storefronts and as an alternative use social media and messaging apps, which implies fee is made by switching to banking apps or wallets.
This implies low conversion charges, say the founders of Beam. The Thailand-based startup created a one-click fee answer for social commerce sellers and has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia’s Surge, with participation from Partech Companions.
Beam was based in 2019 by Nattapat Chaimanowong, Mike Chinakrit Piamchon and Win Vareekasem. The trio had been annoyed by the method of filling out data repeatedly for issues like memberships, bank cards and visas and commenced engaged on a enterprise concept to streamline type filling, which changed into Beam.
Beam founders Nattapat Chaimanowong, Mike Chinakrit Piamchon and Win Vareekasem. Picture Credit: Beam
Vareekasem instructed TechCrunch that after constructing a number of MVPs, the workforce discovered that one of many largest teams coping with the issue had been retailers. “Type filling alone couldn’t clear up gross sales conversions, so funds needed to be built-in too, finally realizing a a lot bigger, burning drawback we’re going after.”
Many social commerce sellers ask for peer-to-peer cell banking apps, which implies they settle for fee by sharing account numbers. This can lead to poor conversions due to restricted fee choices and quite a lot of work to handle funds.
Beam says its checkout course of takes simply 20 seconds. It accepts all main fee service suppliers in every market, like BNPL leaders Atome and Tempo, and claims sellers utilizing their fee answer have elevated checkout success by as much as 30%. Sellers additionally lower your expenses by paying decrease transaction charges, since they don’t need to pay the subscription and platform charges charged by e-commerce marketplaces.
Beam monetizes by charging a flat proportion for every transaction based mostly on the fee methodology. For instance, it fees 2.95% for bank card transactions. Its typical consumer are medium-sized companies that course of a number of hundred orders every day, and promote within the vogue, magnificence, residence and residing and electronics sectors.
Beam is at present centered on Thailand, with plans to increase into Southeast Asia. Whereas there are different startups centered on eradicating friction from social commerce, like Opaper, Vareekasem mentioned Beam differentiates by specializing in end-to-end person checkout experiences for each consumers and retailers, ensuring that the previous can take a look at in only one click on after they store on-line.
