This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 8, 2015.

The online retail scene in Malaysia welcomed a new mobile app with the launch of Shopee. The app which was officially launched last week, is designed with innovative features and a secure payment method for a fully rounded online shopping experience.  

With its soft launch earlier this June, Shopee has accumulated several million active users across Southeast Asia including in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand. Each country has a customised marketplace and features products that are available locally giving entrepreneurs and influencers a chance to establish themselves. The Malaysian site currently has approximately three million product listings and continues to grow.  

Malaysia is currently one of the top places in Southeast Asia for mobile shopping, which the Shopee team sees as a great opportunity to tap into the market. “Today, a large part of online purchases in Southeast Asia takes place on mobile. In Malaysia, mobile penetration is very high and stands at 140% (1.4 phones per person) with 45% smartphone users having made a purchase via their phones in the past year. With the trend leaning towards users purchasing through their smartphones, we see an opportunity here to get users to shop on Shopee’s mobile marketplace. With Shopee’s intuitive interface, anyone can buy and sell in less than 30 seconds, anywhere and anytime,” says Chris Feng, Shopee’s chief executive officer.  

The Shopee allows anyone with a smartphone to browse, shop and sell items anytime and anywhere. Anyone who downloads the app can list a product for free immediately on your phone. The Shopee app allows users to communicate between buyers and sellers in real time with its chat function called Shopee Live Chat. 

Aside from that, the app has a Shopee Guarantee feature that ensures that products are received in perfect condition, otherwise payment will be refunded to buyers in full. The feature helps give assurance to buyers who purchase from first-time sellers while protecting the rights of the buyer and seller at the same time. For anyone that sells an item on Shopee, they can measure their performance and manage their inventories with Seller Assistant. 

For a fully integrated social experience, buyers can track the latest shopping trends with hashtag functions and also share what they have bought on social media. The most popular categories on the app currently are fashion, beauty and consumer electronics. The hashtag functions also gives buyers the chance to navigate their shopping list, since the hashtag functions are divided into sub-categories. In the case of budding entrepreneurs, it gives them the chance to set up their own online business with zero cost and provide access to millions of consumers. 

Thanks to its convenience and host of interactive functions, Shopee gives both buyers and sellers a platform for fuss-free shopping in a buzzing online marketplace.  

The Shoppee app is now available for free download on Apple’s App store and Google Play.