Small and medium-sized businesses are the engine of Southeast Asia’s economy, accounting for the vast majority of enterprises and nearly half of employment across the region. Most built their customer base through social platforms, messaging apps and digital marketplaces. That infrastructure still works, but a new discovery channel is forming alongside it.
A press release by HitPay states that shoppers are increasingly asking AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity what to buy rather than searching themselves. About 900 million people now use ChatGPT every week, and AI is already part of how this region shops.
Data from Bain shows 39% of Asia-Pacific consumers say they already use AI when shopping online, and another 40% intend to.
McKinsey projects this AI-led commerce could account for US$3–5 trillion in retail spending worldwide by 2030. The businesses that appear in those answers are the ones an assistant can read, and for most small merchants, that has not been true until now.
Becoming readable to AI tools has typically required technical work and budget beyond most small merchants. Nine in ten Asia-Pacific retail executives already expect AI to be used more than traditional search by 2026, but the investment needed to meet that shift has remained out of reach for most small businesses.
“AI has a choice to make in Southeast Asia, and so do the platforms that sit underneath it. Every previous wave of digital commerce concentrated advantage at the top: the businesses with the biggest budgets got found first,” said Aditya Haripurkar, Co-Founder and CEO of HitPay.
“AI could follow the same pattern, or it could be the first channel that genuinely levels discovery for the small businesses that make up most of this region’s economy.”
