Ku says blockchain makes it cheaper to run an online marketplace which lets him remove the fees he currently charges merchants to sell products on the site. That, he says, should attract even more sellers. Ku is also creating a payment system based on the technology that will help attract new shoppers in a region where cash still predominates. So far, the response has been positive: Three months in, he says, more than 5,000 merchants have registered 2.3 million or so products on QuuBe.
(Apr 3): In the last decade, Ku Young Bae—a serial entrepreneur and South Korean transplant—has built Singapore’s biggest e-commerce company and fended off giant rivals like Alibaba, Amazon and Tencent.
Now he’s keen to expand beyond his home base into Southeast Asia. To do that, and to compete with his cash-rich rivals, he’s hatched an audacious plan to unleash the efficiencies of blockchain technology on e-commerce. In January, his Qoo10 (pronounced “Q-ten”) online mall started a separate marketplace called QuuBe using the distributed ledger technology best known for making bitcoin possible.
