Tune Money – Malaysia – Offering Local Cash Pay for Online Purchases

It is always great to see more online payment options for cash shoppers.

In Malaysia it was just announced that Tune Money Sdn Bhd by the year’s end will have over 1,400 new offline payment locations for online shoppers. Shop online but pay locally with cash. The offline connection is through Pos Malaysia Bhd and two other local providers. This solution targets non-credit card shoppers and should dramatically increase their access to online products and services.

I love it when any business markets directly to the unbankable crowd. It is a huge market! Consumers using this new service will be charged a small offline fee for each spend but the amount has not yet been announced.

Cash users in Great Britain, Europe, Ireland have great online shopping options such as Ukash & paysafecard. Russian, Africa and Middle Eastern online shoppers have cashU, Paymer and even Webmoney to satisfy their local cash deposit requirements.

The US is a bit stickier on the cash-to-digital routine and they generally want all funds routed through their banking systems, in one way or another. Consequently, there are usually one or two additional steps in the cash-to-digital funding process. US companies such as PaidByCash offer a similar convenient local cash hook up. Here is how that works,

“…print a PaidByCash Payment Code, load it with cash at a nearby store, and shop online with it everywhere Debit MasterCard® is accepted. PaidByCash is less expensive than a money order and other prepaid cards — and is accepted more places online than a money order or a personal check.” *paidbycash

PaidByCash is not quite Tune Money, Paymer or Ukash but its a fine solutions for my favorite unbankable US online shoppers. In order to attract a wider customer base it seems these non bank solutions are becoming more and more important for Internet retail operations.

What do you think? Are cash shoppers and non credit card consumers becoming more important to Internet retailers? If you have an example of this process or a message about your online shopping please leave me a comment.