Consumers across Southeast Asia still experience e-commerce as a bargain-hunting paradise: flash sales, free shipping, vouchers, cashback, livestream discounts, and endless price competition. But behind that cheerful promotional theatre lies a harsher truth. The economics are getting tougher for merchants, and the ecosystem is increasingly built on a tension that may not be sustainable in the long term.
According to Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2026 by MomentumWorks, platform take rates continue to rise across the region, with Shopee reaching a GAAP take rate of 13.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Yet sellers interviewed by MomentumWorks said their real all-in costs (including commissions, advertising, logistics, payment charges, affiliate fees, and platform services) often exceed 30 per cent of GMV.
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That gap between official take rate and lived merchant experience tells the real story of Southeast Asian e-commerce in 2026.
The published number is not the merchant’s number
A 13.5 per cent take rate sounds manageable, especially in a region where e-commerce platforms are still in growth mode. But sellers do not pay only the published commission. They pay for traffic. They pay for conversion. They pay to join campaigns. They subsidise consumers. They pay logistics and fulfilment fees. They pay affiliates. They often absorb operational leakage and returns as well.
MomentumWorks cites seller feedback suggesting that platform fees alone can approach 25 per cent even before a merchant includes its own shipping costs and affiliate spend. In some cases, the total drain on revenue approaches half the sale value before product cost is even counted.
This explains one of the report’s most striking observations: sellers are squeezed, but they cannot leave.
Platform dependence is the real moat
Why do merchants stay when margins are deteriorating? Because in Southeast Asia, platform demand is still overwhelmingly dominant.
MomentumWorks estimates that non-platform ecommerce GMV in the region totalled US$27.8 billion in 2025, against platform GMV of US$157.6 billion. That means roughly 85 per cent of e-commerce in Southeast Asia still flows through the major platforms. Social commerce, brand-owned websites, multi-brand retail sites, and chat-based transactions are growing, but they remain secondary.
For merchants, this creates a painful asymmetry. They dislike rising costs, yet they remain dependent on the platforms’ traffic and conversion machinery. Exiting a platform is not just a channel decision. It can feel like voluntary invisibility.
That dependence gives leading platforms enormous room to keep shifting economics in their favour, at least until behaviour changes at scale.
The paradox of cheap e-commerce
Perhaps the most provocative argument in the report is that Southeast Asia’s e-commerce has not yet reached its “true price floor”. That sounds counterintuitive in a market obsessed with discounts. But the report’s point is sharp: today’s affordability is often artificial. It is driven by subsidies funded by platforms, brands, and sellers—not by structurally lower supply-chain costs.
In plain English, prices look low to shoppers because someone else is carrying the burden.
If merchant economics are deteriorating while platforms still need vouchers and incentives to drive price competitiveness, then Southeast Asia has not yet produced a fully efficient discount retail model. It has only produced a heavily subsidised one.
That matters because the region still contains a large, highly price-sensitive consumer base that remains underpenetrated in e-commerce. If a platform can eventually redesign the supply chain rather than merely subsidise the transaction, the market could open much further.
The Temu question hangs over the region
This is where the report raises a question that should make every incumbent uncomfortable: Can a Pinduoduo or Temu-like model really emerge in Southeast Asia?
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The answer is not obvious. The region is more fragmented than China, with different languages, customs regimes, payment behaviours, logistics costs, and regulatory environments. But the demand side is compelling. Large parts of Southeast Asia remain highly price-sensitive. If a structural cost advantage can be unlocked through sourcing, inventory, logistics, and product design, the addressable market may be larger than current platform models suggest.
Cross-border flows offer a clue. In the Philippines, cross-border e-commerce GMV surpassed US$0.1 billion, with SHEIN and Temu driving significant parcel volume and freight tonnage. Thailand has tightened import oversight, and Vietnam continues to increase scrutiny. But demand has not disappeared. It is adapting.
The danger for incumbents is that they may be fighting over subsidised middle-income consumers while a deeper value segment remains only partially served.
Sellers are becoming multi-platform by necessity, not ambition
MomentumWorks notes that multi-platform operations are no longer optional for sellers. That is a critical shift. Merchants are not diversifying because it is an elegant strategy. They are doing it because platform dependence is risky, algorithmic visibility is unstable, and any one channel can suddenly become too costly.
This could reshape the e-commerce service landscape. Merchant software, cross-platform inventory tools, ad optimisation platforms, social commerce enablement, and direct customer retention solutions all become more relevant when sellers need to spread risk across channels.
The rise of affiliate-driven commerce compounds this. As platforms push more content-led discovery, brands and sellers have to spend more not just on logistics and platform fees, but on attention itself. Discovery is becoming both more expensive and more fragmented.
Regulators are entering the picture, but not to save sellers
Several Southeast Asian governments are tightening e-commerce rules, especially around imports, competition, and platform accountability. Thailand has abolished its de minimis exemption on imported goods. Vietnam has passed a new e-commerce law that places more responsibility on platforms to regulate sellers. Indonesia remains politically sensitive to the dominance of foreign-linked platforms and Chinese product inflows.
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But regulation may not directly improve merchant margins. In fact, it could further entrench the biggest players by increasing compliance costs and favouring platforms with the scale to manage them.
That means sellers should not expect public policy to restore balance quickly. The structural tension will likely persist.
The next wave of opportunity may sit outside the transaction
For founders and investors, the lesson is clear. The biggest opportunities may no longer be in competing for the transaction itself, but in reducing friction for sellers trapped inside high-cost ecosystems. That includes better analytics, AI-enabled content production, customer retention, financing, embedded software, and tools that help merchants understand true profitability by channel.
Southeast Asia e-commerce still looks like a consumer success story. But underneath, it is becoming a merchant stress test. And when the people funding the discount machine start to crack, the whole system can change very quickly.
Cheap e-commerce, in this region, is getting expensive.
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