7-11 Taiwan - Part 3: Payment

President Chain Store Corporation has storefronts and logistics well covered, but payment is arguably the only piece of puzzle that still has some room for improvement.



icash is a prepaid card issued by 7-11 in Taiwan, sort of like pocket money used for micro-payment mainly in 7-11. It has a point accumulation system and benefits like cash rebate to promote spending.

icash has reached an important milestone this year after launching a co-branded "iu card" (icash悠遊卡). Important in the sense as this contactless card is not only limited to 7-11s, but it can be used for public transportations and selected stores like Starbucks, Sogo, Muji etc.

However, you cannot use icash to pay online yet, with the exception of their own online store - 7net. Obviously, this is the missing puzzle and something for President Chain Store Corp to work on.

7-11 Taiwan - Part 2: Logistics

Logistics, it seems like a simple single word but it contains many aspects - warehousing (storage), location, packaging, labeling, invoicing, delivery, acceptance, tracking, reporting et al.

It's definitely a burden for small-medium-businesses. But in Taiwan, SMBs can rely on 7-elevens, or precisely Wisdom Distribution Service Corporation (大智通文化行銷).



Online merchants can store their goods in WDS's warehouse, and they will be distributed to 7-11s all over Taiwan. Its distribution service benefits not only B2C stores but also C2C sellers.

Let's say while confirming a transaction on Rakuten Ichiba, the buyer has specified a 7-11 outlet (for example outlet B) for collection. Seller will then print the packaging slip online or via the ibon kiosk and handover the item to 7-11 in his area (outlet A). WDS will deliver the item from outlet A to outlet B and the item is ready to be picked up and paid by the buyer.

This helps minimize the fraud and risk of pay first and collect / receive later.

7-11 Taiwan - Part 1: Storefronts

We all know that convenience store, well is just for convenience. You can't expect a huge selection of products there. It's different in Taiwan though.

More than 4,000 of 7-11 outlets + online stores (under President Chain Store Corp) + in store catalog book (for pre-order) + various complimentary services = Super Store!

Knowing that by just having the 7-11s is insufficient, President Chain Store Corp has gathered a few online storefronts under its umbrella since the past 10 years.



They started with investing in the Amazon of Taiwan - books.com.tw (博客来网络书店) back in year 2000. At the moment, around 90% of orders being made online have preferred to pay and collect at 7-11s, heavily rely on the physical storefront. This at the same time has also encourage sales of other products in the convenience store.

7-11 Taiwan - Super store on the cloud?

Taiwan has a great ecosystem supporting e-commerce surrounding 7-11s, the convenience stores. It's arguably the best in the world, bar probably Japan.



President Chain Store Corporation (統一超商) owns over 4,000 of 7-11 outlets located all over Taiwan, and various complimentary services supporting their online and offline retail.

Imagine what you can do when you walk in to their 7-11s...

A meetup with Taiwan E-commerce Godfather

I had a lucky break bumping into Taiwan E-commerce Godfather, Mr Jan Hung-Tze (詹宏志) on a recent PayPal Event in Singapore not too long ago.

詹宏志 and I

In case you don't know who's Mr Jan Hung-Tze, he's the founder of Taiwan largest and publicly listed ecommerce mall - PC Home Online (http://www.pchomeonline.com.tw/), it also serve as a platform for over 8800 online stores (3rd party merchants) at its online mall, in which very recently they just spin it off becoming another public listed company.

Taiwan: E-commerce powered by service

Back in 1998, the Taiwan government has had a campaign to get 1 million businesses to go online and transact.

Similar to most parts of the world, e-commerce in Taiwan had faced the following challenges at that time:

• Maintaining the e-commerce system (software, hardware and infrastructure).
• Staying up-to-date with constant evolution of Internet technologies.
• Integration with financial / payment services.
• Integration with other services such as logistics.

Taiwan PayEasy expansion via Vending Machine?

It not uncommon for us to hear what's started off as online pureplay e-commerce, expanding their business via brick & mortar.

We have seen small business, growing from one-man-show blogshop, to a full fledge webStore, and then follow by a physical retail outlet (which easily double their gross sales, both online & offline)

We have seen also the famous t-shirt site like threadless.com, opening up retail store.

But it's NOT so common B2C pureplay plotting their next growth on....