Cambodia’s Postal Service to Launch E-commerce in March

PHNOM PENH— The state-owned Cambodia Post will launch an online shopping platform in March in a move to tap the current rise in e-commerce activity, local media reported on Thursday, citing the enterprise’s boss.

Ork Bora, director-general of the Cambodia Post, said that after a year of studying e-commerce, the enterprise decided to launch the platform to allow all business owners to sell their products with the postal service.

“We plan to launch in the first quarter of the year, maybe in March. I have been conducting a study and working on online shopping for about a year, so now we decided to launch an online shopping platform and businesspeople can sell their products with us,” he was quoted as saying by the Khmer Times.

“You see that online shopping is getting popular among our people now. If you look at the number of internet users with the Telecom Regulator of Cambodia, there were some seven million,” he said.

Bora said that the enterprise had already served as an agent for China’s biggest online shopping company Alibaba and has delivered their products to customers in Cambodia for four months.

He said that currently the Cambodia Post has a nationwide delivery and transport service, so an online shopping platform would be convenient for both sellers and customers.

Bora said there were many options for customers to complete their transactions including paying online, through a mobile money transfer service or by giving money directly to postal service staff.

“We don’t charge a service fee from customers, but sellers on our online system,” he said, adding that starting from March, people can log in to the Cambodia Post website for online shopping.

Although online shopping is on the rise in Cambodia, the Southeast Asian country has not yet passed its e-commerce law, which is expected to be debated and passed by the National Assembly as early as the middle of this year.

The draft e-commerce law, designed to protect both investors and consumers, has 12 chapters that are divided into 90 articles. It has rules for trading companies to ensure the security of consumers when making online payments.

It also states punishment for those who abuse the law.