Target market

It is obvious that the cross-border e-commerce market is growing exponentially and cannot be ignored as newer and better online shopping platforms powered by cutting-edge social technologies continue to gain mass acceptance. Livestream technology has come of age that it is now an essential enabler, not “a nice to have” in order to meet consumer demand and adapt to the competitive landscape. To satisfy an increasingly demanding consumer base that now expects top-level service, personalized experiences, and an easy-to-use interface, social e-commerce is utilizing the most popular technology trends. Use cases are still being explored in the social commerce space, but privacy issues and incidences of cyber-attacks may hinder market growth to a certain extent. In this context, FADO Go is embracing new emerging technologies to solve problems endemic to live commerce and accelerate its growth.

Digital buyers are now considering social shopping on new alternative social e-commerce platforms which are less conventional and less centralized. Even though social peer-to-peer networks have witnessed rapid growth over the past decade, customer expectations for social cross-border shopping haven’t been adequately fulfilled in regards to logistics & delivery, compliance with local regulations, exchange and returns, and cross-border payments. When it comes to the social e-commerce value chain for cross-border businesses, social e-commerce is beyond setting up a website and selling products online via social media but includes product configuration, logistics, secured payment gateway, and suitable infrastructure. Seeing the most problematic pain points in international trades and social e-commerce, FADO Go is set on being a dominant player for the next-generation fully decentralized seamless social cross-border shopping in the Web 3.0 environment.

Broad market trends also reveal that now is the time to undertake decentralization, the next big step for the world wide web. According to Research and Markets (2020), the global blockchain market will grow from USD 3.0 billions in 2020 to USD 39.7 billions by 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 67.3%. Across all application areas, the retail and e-commerce segments are predicted to exhibit the highest growth rates. Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology to assure data security, payment transparency, and operational efficiency, has a major impact on social e-commerce. Blockchain is offering live e-commerce players including FADO Go a new way of serving customers.

Most social media sites available today are centralized and exploiting user content for marketing campaigns and advertising seriously, which poses a great concern of privacy and data security in these platforms. Despite the fact that the digital social network media platforms follow end-to-end encryption for security, a problem occurs when metadata is exchanged along with messages, thereby allowing third parties to steal personal details. There are also other fundamental problems facing social networking such as fake news, excessive trolling, censorship, and demonetization. Blockchain, with distributed ledger and decentralized concept, secures users’ content by encrypting it. Blockchain-based social media provides more benefits than just security and privacy; users can gain control over their own contents and cryptocurrencies are used for secure communication by paying and buying content in peer-to-peer marketing. A decentralized approach to blockchain technology in social networking ensures privacy and enables social e-commerce, crowdfunding transactions as well as smart apps and smart contracts.

The number of B2B cross-border transactions finalized on the blockchain worldwide is expected to increase dramatically in the following years. There were 122 million B2B cross-border transactions worldwide in 2020. This figure is set to double and hit 280 million in 2021. By 2024, it is forecast to soar by 345% to over 1.2 billion (Juniper Research, 2021). Statista shows that the Asian market accounts for more than ⅓ of the total transaction in 2020. By 2025, the number of B2B cross-border transactions on the blockchain in the region will reach 745 million. Europe is the second region in terms of the number of blockchain transactions with 81.3 million transactions in 2021 and the figure is estimated to reach 466 million by 2025. With the number of B2B cross-border blockchain transactions surging from 39.2 million to 254.3 million, North America ranks the third-leading region and is expected to witness almost a 550% growth in the next four years. Apparently, blockchain is quite promising for cross-border e-commerce transactions.

Although blockchain is still in the early-adopter phase of a technology curve, with an increasing number of blockchain wallet users worldwide, FADO Go anticipates blockchain and cryptocurrency users as a fast-growing market segment that we want to capture. The global user base of all cryptocurrencies has increased by nearly 190% between 2018 and 2020 and there are now 68.4 million blockchain wallet users (Blockchain 2021). Moreover, cryptocurrency enthusiasts are also highly engaged in the adoption of cryptocurrencies in mainstream business activity as well as dedicated to the growth of the ecosystem, representing the ideal group of early adopters for using products offered by FADO Go.

(Source: Blockchain, 2021)

In fact, accepting cryptocurrency payments is still rocket science for many website owners, merchants, and consumers all over the world. The traditional payment method for cross-border e-commerce is often through digital wallets, credit/debit cards, and internet banking. However, Pymnts and BitPay's recent studies reveal a high demand for payments in cryptocurrencies to make online purchases more private or secure over traditional credit card or bank account-based payments (Cointelegraph, 2021). FADO Go is uniquely positioned to tap directly into the cryptocurrency market and provide cryptocurrency owners (commonly younger, middle-income and male) with more comfortable, more secure, and cost-effective ways to shop online. We believe cryptocurrencies if adopted efficiently, could strongly prove beneficial for cross-border e-commerce because cryptocurrencies have the ability to appease consumer demand for immediacy and security while expanding market share.