In recent years, the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce across the globe has brought many conveniences to people’s daily lives. According to statistics, in 2021, Based on Singapore’s overall e-commerce traffic, the top 5 players in the e-commerce industry in the year 2021 were Shopee, Lazada, Qoo10, Amazon, and Ezbuy. As of the second quarter of 2021, the most visited e-commerce platform was Shopee. The number of people using the company increased by 82% between the first quarter to the second quarter of 2021. The company had nearly 5 million visitors in the second quarter alone. These figures are just for Singapore alone, and the number will be in multi-folds if we consider the entire Asia Pacific market. However, behind the industry, the problem of the proliferation of fake goods is often hidden, especially most of the products involved are from a different country of origin, which puts forward higher requirements for government supervision and governance.
The table below shows the increase in e-Commerce activities:
Source: https://heysara.sg/statistics-on-e-commerce-landscape-in-singapore/
According to research, cross-border e-commerce products are relatively broad, generally involving multiple countries, origins, and channels. There are many sales links, and there are always people doing everything possible to exploit loopholes to make huge profits. Therefore, the problem of fakes has always been an incurable “severe disease” in the cross-border e-commerce industry.
The AccessReal Brand Protection Platform helps manufacturers protect their brands, detect counterfeit goods, and perform product track-n-trace in the supply chain. It also allows manufacturers to engage with their customers directly. AccessReal’s Anti-Counterfeit AccessReal Code (AR Code) can effectively help the government’s digital supervision combat the counterfeit smuggling market.
With the rampant counterfeit goods and product safety concerns, there are enormous demands for solutions to provide transparency of products from “sources to consumers.” i-Sprint has developed AccessReal to address such rapidly growing demands. i-Sprint’s AccessReal provides anti-counterfeiting and traceability technology. It aims at cross-border e-commerce, carries out digital traceability, enhances the government’s digital supervision capabilities, and prevents any disruption in supply chain activities.
Based on a unique identity for each product, it acts as the “connector” of the various links of goods from production to consumption, focusing on the stakeholders in the supply chain: government agencies, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. The AccessReal platform enables manufacturers to form a product authentication and digital traceability system based on three major sectors.
1. Product Authentication and Supervision Platform
The first is to establish a product authentication and supervision platform for government agencies or reputable organizations, record cross-border activities, track imported goods and assign unique anti-counterfeiting traceability identification code to each imported product to form a product authentication and supervision system.
2. Enterprise Supply Chain Management Platform
The second is to help enterprises establish a trusted supply chain platform. It will enable enterprises to implement a product traceability system to prove their product provenance’s legality, transparency, and compliance. It also provides data to establish a credit system and a dispute settlement mechanism for any unauthorized activities.
3. Mobile Application For Stakeholders/Users In The Supply Chain
The third is to establish a mobile application for the stakeholders/users to deal with or purchase imported goods with confidence. Imported goods are attached with unique product identification labels. Consumers and other stakeholders can scan the unique code to perform traceability and counterfeit inquiries to confirm that the goods received are through the official platform. Authenticated goods are of official and legal origin.
After its completion, the AccessReal based Product Authentication and Traceability System will promote the digital traceability of cross-border e-commerce products, enabling “sources can be traced, whereabouts can be traced” capability. When product quality issues arise, they can be traced to the source and ensure accountability. This new capability helps promote the change from passive supervision of imported product safety and quality management to a proactive and transparent distribution operation in the trusted supply chain.