iPay88 Holding Sdn Bhd introduces its first ever ‘iPay88 Academy’ with the aim to enable the Malaysian public to gain knowledge and skills in e-commerce operations for free.

iPay88 founder and executive director, Chan Kok Long says that the iPay88 Academy is set up to directly support the most fundamental objective of the National Strategic E-Commerce Roadmap – which is to accelerate seller adoption of e-Commerce in Malaysia.

He also revealed that the provider has invested close to RM 300,000 into the academy as part of their corporate social responsibility initiative.

“The tipping point for e-Commerce to move to the next level of adoption in this country relies heavily on individuals and businesses going online. Therefore, iPay88 wants to step up to the plate and do our part in driving this move to e-Commerce.

“Meanwhile, the benefits of the iPay88 Academy for the mass market is illustrated by Bill Gates’ quote - If your business is not on the Internet, then your business is out of business.”

The iPay88 Academy is carefully structured to be a one-stop resource center to guide individuals or SMEs to adopt e-Commerce smoothly and speedily.

“The target group of the Academy is basically anyone who wishes to start any online business. There are many willing merchants and sellers; however, they are struggling to embrace the digital economy, due to various factors.

“Therefore, our instructor-led Academy programmes are carefully planned out to share the tricks of going online quickly while avoiding the common pitfalls (of failure),” says Chan.

The courses comprises of systematic series with 3 level of courses namely Beginner, Intermediate and Advance.

“For now, the courses will be held here at iPay88 office in Kuala Lumpur and as this room is pretty modest in space, we can only accomodate 25 participants per session. Each courses will run for two hours long and we will look into finding some other spaces in the future,” says iPay88 Academy manager Sharifah Juriah Syed Ashbahar.

She also explained that iPay88 Academy also offers two types of programmes namely the ‘Learning programme’ to assists companies, SMEs and individuals to learn how to launch and generate traffic for their online business, and the ‘Training Programme’ targeting to improve employees, merchants and re-sellers product knowledge as value add to iPay88 services.

“So far, the iPay88 Academy has run a pilot course successfully from May 22 to early August with 56 participants.

“iPay88 Academy has lined-up 5 courses under e-Commerce series this year and will add more courses under new series of e-Payment, Digital Marketing and Cross Border next year. The first official course will commence effectively on September 19,” says Sharifah.

Chan says that it is important to note that iPay88 Academy is brand-agnostic.

“We work with various e-Commerce experts namely Shopping Cart brands such as SiteGiant, EasyStore and Webshaper; Logistics providers such as EasyParcel, TresGo and Aramex; and Dropshipping Provider such as Kumoten to deliver the course.”

Moving on, iPay88 will work with selected local universities to incorporate the syllabus of its ‘iPay88 Academy’ into the coursework of the academic institutions.

This is to help address the long-standing issue of universities producing graduates who lack practical skills related to online businesses.

iPay88 is currently initiating discussions with several universities, to customize the ‘iPay88 Academic’ syllabus as the ‘real industry practice’ part of the universities’ select academic coursework.

“Many students now merely graduated with theoretical knowledge when they pursue their diploma or degree in eCommerce-related courses. Hence, they face difficulties applying the knowledge in real life.

“We believe that by providing such Certification, the local academic market will be able to supply more comprehensive, eCommerce-enabled graduates who can set up online businesses from scratch - from planning a business to creating the business and ultimately growing the business.”

For this certification partnership, iPay88 targets to confirm partnerships with three local academic institutions by mid of 2019.

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