Rising fees are changing the role of South-east Asia’s e-commerce enablers
The economics of e-commerce have changed in recent years amid rising marketplace commissions
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FOR a long time, South-east Asia’s e-commerce enablers rode the region’s online shopping boom by helping brands do one thing better than anyone else: sell on marketplaces.
But the economics of e-commerce have changed in recent years.
Marketplace commissions have risen across the region. On top of that, sellers are spending more on advertising, logistics, returns, affiliate commissions, and platform campaign incentives.
As costs continue to pile up, brands are becoming less focused on simply increasing sales and more concerned with whether those transactions remain profitable.
“The conversation has shifted from ‘how do we grow GMV?’ to ‘how do we grow profitable GMV?’” says Paul Srivorakul, co-founder and chief executive officer of Thailand-headquartered aCommerce.
That change is reshaping not only how brands sell online, but also the e-commerce enablers that support them.
With margins under pressure, brands are becoming more selective about which services they truly need and which they can cut to rein in costs.
As a result, the industry is moving away from basic marketplace management services towards those that help improve profitability.
A new value proposition
While brands and sellers are feeling the squeeze from higher marketplace fees, e-commerce enablers remain very much needed. However, their value proposition is changing.
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“A few years ago, the enabler industry was a proper red ocean,” says Jasper Knoben, CEO of Singapore-based Intrepid, noting that the old model was centered on marketplace store management services.
“Today, that is a baseline commodity,” he adds.
ACommerce says brands are showing less willingness to pay for basic store operations such as uploading product listings, running standard campaigns, or producing generic content.
Some of these functions are increasingly being automated, while others can be handled in-house or outsourced at a lower cost.
While “some brands have become more selective and budget-conscious,” Srivorakul says he has not observed “a broad retreat” from e-commerce enablers.
Instead, brands are prioritising services that directly affect revenue, profitability, and operational efficiency.
These services include marketplace management, performance marketing, pricing and promotion strategy, data analytics, order fulfillment, customer service, live commerce, and social commerce.
Srivorakul explains that brands want a much clearer picture of how each sales channel contributes to profitability.
As such, companies are leaning into analytics to understand metrics such as customer acquisition cost, basket size, customer segmentation, and repeat purchases.
The shift reflects a broader change in how brands approach e-commerce spending.
Twinings and Ovaltine, the premium tea and malted beverage brands under AB Foods, have become far more selective about where their e-commerce budget goes.
Both brands have responded to rising marketplace costs by cutting back on promotions that do not generate obvious returns, optimising affiliate commissions, and reducing the number of livestream sessions they run, says Izhhar Gemilang, AB Foods’ assistant manager for e-commerce in South-east Asia.
Rather than immediately hiking prices to offset soaring marketplace fees, the company first looks for operational efficiencies.
“If customers only buy because of discounts, then there’s something wrong with the product,” Gemilang says.
The bigger fees have also prompted Twinings and Ovaltine to rethink their spending on e-commerce enablers.
Both continue to outsource fulfillment to e-commerce enablers because building warehouse operations in-house would be expensive and operationally complex.
Other outsourced services, however, are now being evaluated based on measurable business outcomes.
This is also a key focus for Indonesia’s Power Commerce Asia.
Instead of concentrating solely on online marketplaces, the company has expanded its fulfillment network across the country while building capabilities that also support offline retail.
Power Commerce operates 10 fulfillment centers across Indonesia, allowing brands to reduce shipping costs and delivery times by storing inventory closer to consumers.
Hadi Kuncoro, the company’s co-founder and CEO, says logistics has become one of the biggest competitive advantages as marketplace fees continue to climb.
“If you only have one fulfillment center, shipping to eastern Indonesia becomes expensive and slow, leaving the seller to absorb higher costs,” he adds.
Yet despite this pressure on brands’ margins, e-commerce enablers in South-east Asia continue to report strong business growth.
Intrepid tells Tech in Asia that its revenue has nearly doubled year on year for three consecutive years.
Japan’s AnyMind Group says it reported 151 per cent year-on-year growth in its e-commerce business during the first quarter of 2026, while aCommerce achieved its first full year of net profitability in 2025.
Here to stay
Shopee’s take rates – how much a business makes from a transaction – across South-east Asia have increased year after year, reaching 13.5 per cent in Q4 2025, per a Momentum Works report.
Even so, the platform charges sellers fees including commissions, advertising, and logistics that often exceed 30 per cent of gross merchandise value (GMV).
This has made some sellers consider leaving marketplaces.
For example, reports indicate that in Vietnam, the number of merchants on Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, and Tiki declined by 7 per cent in 2025.
But the seller exodus is not expected to become widespread. AB Foods’ Gemilang argues that such decisions are more “reactive than strategic”.
For brands, building their own sales channels could ultimately be even more expensive, he says.
Offline expansion requires opening physical stores, while setting up an official site means investing in web development and logistics. Social commerce needs dedicated teams, and even chat commerce involves costs, such as fees paid to WhatsApp.
“You can’t boycott marketplaces,” points out Power Commerce’s Kuncoro. “They’ve become consumer behavior.”
To adapt to growing marketplace fees, Kuncoro says Power Commerce’s playbook is to advise clients to assign different roles to different sales channels. Some are optimised for brand awareness and sales volume, while others are expected to deliver stronger profitability.
“The challenge is helping brands identify the right customer segments and determine which channels deserve investment,” he adds. “Each channel now needs to have a clearly defined goal or purpose. You can no longer treat them all the same.”
Marketplaces are still expected to remain the primary channel for driving reach and traffic, as well as providing the logistics and transaction infrastructure that brands need.
By selling through marketplaces, brands do not have to build and manage their own logistics or payment systems.
However, brands will become more selective and analytical in how they invest across channels, says Akinori Kubo, managing director of global e-commerce at AnyMind Group.
“For us, it’s becoming even more important to help brands look beyond topline GMV and focus on sustainable growth,” he adds.
Intrepid and aCommerce also believe marketplaces will continue to be an important sales avenue for brands.
Brands now regard marketplaces such as Shopee and Lazada as conversion channels, where consumers arrive with clear purchase intent, says Intrepid.
Meanwhile, aCommerce sees the strongest demand outside marketplaces coming from social commerce, live commerce, chat commerce, official websites, and online-to-offline retail partnerships.
“Brands are not leaving marketplaces, but they are actively reducing overdependence on them,” aCommerce’s Srivorakul points out.
The social commerce bet
Social commerce is one of the newest areas of focus for e-commerce enablers. Nearly every major enabler in South-east Asia is operating studios dedicated to livestreaming and content commerce.
Intrepid’s Knoben estimates that social commerce currently accounts for around 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the region’s e-commerce GMV, up from less than 5 per cent four years ago.
However, that does not mean brands are spending indiscriminately on live commerce.
Gemilang says Twinings and Ovaltine have reduced the number of livestream sessions they run to lower costs amid rising marketplace fees.
For both brands, the return on investment from livestreaming has not been particularly strong.
“Instead of livestreaming every day for long hours, we now focus on peak shopping moments such as double-digit campaigns and payday sales,” Gemilang explains.
Like other areas of e-commerce, live commerce is now judged less by the amount of activity and more by profitability. Still, e-commerce enablers continue to invest heavily in the category.
AnyMind recently opened 20 live commerce studios in Indonesia for planning, producing, and broadcasting livestream shopping sessions. The expansion brings its total studio network in Asia Pacific to 85.
“We’re continuing to see the strongest momentum in live commerce,” says AnyMind’s Kubo, referring to both human and AI livestreamers.
The company also collaborated with electronics titan Samsung on live commerce campaigns on Shopee and TikTok Shop in April 2026.
Kubo says the value of live commerce lies in its ability to combine product discovery, customer education, and purchasing into a single interactive experience.
Consumers nowadays also expect more engaging shopping experiences, making live commerce an effective way to drive real-time engagement.
Intrepid operates around 100 live commerce studios across South-east Asia, while aCommerce runs about 20.
Knoben of Intrepid explains that the company has dedicated livestreaming teams because brands need help with coordinating operations, affiliates, creators, and paid media at scale.
He points out that social commerce combines entertainment, product discovery, and checkout into one experience. To succeed, brands need to continuously create content and convert viewers into buyers across livestreams, videos, affiliates, and ads.
In contrast to AB Foods’ experience, many brands that work with Intrepid are shifting more of their budgets toward social commerce to generate demand, according to Knoben.
“Brand margins for online channels are getting to the same range as for offline channels,” he says. “But ultimately, brands need to be where the consumer is.” TECH IN ASIA
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