[ 7 June 2000 ] CaseTrust Limited strategic alliance with ePublicEye.com Far East
June 7, 2000[ 16 June 2000 ] CommerceNet Singapore in Dialogue with Korean Institute of E-Commerce
June 16, 2000CASETRUST, incorporatised as a public company in April, will launch its initial public offering within 12-18 months, its director Toh See Kiat said yesterday.
The first round of private placements is already underway, he said. CaseTrust plans to extend its global reach, and an IPO launch will boost the reputation of the company.
“For a trust-mark to be effective, it has to be widely known. We don’t want people to view us as a ‘fly-by-night’ company.” The proceeds of the IPO will be used for expansion, marketing and for developing technology for the company.
CaseTrust has plans to tie up with companies in the region to set up its trust-mark, which promotes safer onlne shopping. It is in talks with companies from major trading nations like Malaysia, Hongkong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and Korea. Discussions are expected to be completed by the year-end.
Negotiations are also going on with a UK company and there are further plans to penetrate into the European market.
According to Dr Toh, CaseTrust aims to break into countries which are e-commerce savvy, and preferably where there are CommerceNet organisations. CommerceNet is a non-profit organisation set up in 1994 to promote e-commerce usage.
He noted that “being an Internet company, we have to move fast so we can capture market share”.
The plans to go global was given a boost yesterday when the company entered into a partnership with ePublicEye.com Far East, a unit of US-based ePublic Intelligence.
Under the memorandum of understanding, the companies, which both provide trust-mark schemes, will work together to promote safer online shopping. There will be a cross-linking of Web sites to CaseTrust and ePublicEye.com approved retail outlets.
Under ePublicEye.com, online merchant rating reports are determined by the consumer’s satisfaction with the e-transactions. According to its director Christopher Bates, customers will not return to a site which they have bad experiences with.
The company has 13,000 merchants registered under its trust-mark scheme. With 115 more hooked up in the Asia-Pacific region, the company aims to expand its range of languages to Japanese, Korean, Thai and Tagalog within eight weeks.
For CaseTrust, it has more than 700 merchants accredited with its logos, and targets to bring in another 300 merchants by the year-end.