LIVE FROM COMMUNICASIA 2013: Consumers in some Asian markets are skipping the PC e-commerce stage and moving straight to making purchases from their mobile phones, Philip Yen, group head of emerging payments, APAC and MEA for MasterCard, suggested.

“It’s really Indonesia, Thailand and China, which are the ones that maybe just skip a little bit of accessing and shopping using PCs, and jump to mobile right away,” he said.

While noting that “it’s not the developed countries” that are driving adoption of mobile commerce in the region, Yen said that “we can’t make a conclusive statement” that there is a difference in attitudes between developed and developing markets.

For example, the Philippines represent an emerging territory where mobile shopping has not taken off.

“There are many factors that are going to affect these numbers,” he said.

Of the developed countries, “Australia, for example, is actually very low as far as mobile shopping is concerned, and Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, the hotbeds of mobile activities and mobile usage, are kind of in the middle,” he observed.

The findings were based on a MasterCard survey conducted last year across 14 markets. Yen noted that respondents already had access to bank accounts and the internet, and as such does not reflect the preferences of unbanked consumers in the region.