The E-Commerce Business Opportunity and Challenge for Latin America
Latin America has increasingly been on the radar of eBusiness leaders looking to expand their digital offerings. Despite the economic downturn the continent had experienced lately, Latin America is a market where retailers have to pay attention to. The continent has a population of over a half billion where two of its countries are among the world’s 15 largest economies. It’s one of the top regions in the world for e-commerce growth, and retailers that build out their e-commerce operations now will be in the best position to grab market share when the economy rebounds.
It is forecasted that in 2019, 151.1 million people in Latin America are expected to buy goods and services online. This is a dramatic increase from 121.1 million in 2016. But these figures show that the Latin America e-commerce market is still rather small, in comparison with other continents like the Asia Pacific or North American regions. But statistics show that retail e-commerce sales in Latin America are projected to grow from 57.02 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 to 84.75 billion U.S. dollars by 2019. Interestingly, Brazil is the market leader with over 16.58 billion U.S. dollars in e-commerce sales in 2016, followed by Mexico, with annual e-commerce sales of 7.19 billion U.S. dollars, while Argentina generated 5.1 billion U.S. dollars worth of online product sales revenues that year. The average number of annual online transactions per capita in Latin America in 2016 was the lowest worldwide, with only 9.2 annual online transactions (statistica.com).
Latin America Retail E-commerce Sales
The figures show that there is a lot of opportunity for the E-commerce industry for the Latin American continent. However, doing business in the region can be a challenge. Regulatory hurdles, infrastructure issues, and slow economic growth rates present hurdles in key Latin American markets. These are brought about by the extensive government interference, widespread corruption and market inefficiencies. The lives of ordinary citizens are daily witnesses of the important conflicts of interest between the regulators of Latin American fiat currencies and the general interests of the population. Despite these challenges, eCommerce continues to charge forward in every country across the region.
Turning the Challenges to Opportunities
Knowing the challenges businesses and retailers are encountering, UTEMIS plans to create a platform to address issues in the Latin American E-Commerce system. UTEMIS Limited Liability Corporation will introduce a cryptographic utility token, named UTEMIS (UTS), to decentralize companies’ reputation in Latin America. UTEMIS provides a solution to these problems by decentralizing the reputation of all businesses in Latin America on the Blockchain. The platform will be the first public and decentralized ledger where all our customers (UTEMIS is a Business to Business (B2B) platform so when we say customers we mean businesses, not people) can check each other’s reputation and conduct business knowing that if they do something wrong it will be in their profile.
The UTEMIS cryptocurrency is transforming the entire Latin American continent into a single economic space through:
Conducting business in the entire Latin American continent as if it were one country, find new clients and suppliers and evaluate them by their reputation.
Saving 99% of the current costs of conducting transactions and payments, no bureaucracy or waste of time and instant payment.
Following the effective business process of Chinese e-commerce giants, purchases are 100% protected with UTEMIS escrow account, if something happens you get 100% of your money back.
Building Trust and reputation creating the fuel that drives business growth. By decentralizing their reputation on the Ethereum Blockchain, businesses that are honest will thrive, and those that are not will find themselves driven out from the system. And for the first time ever 100% of this outcome depends on them.
The UTEMIS Technology Ecosystem
The UTEMIS ecosystem revolves around a web application built in PHP/ JavaScript and a MySQL database. All mounted on a scalable cloud services platform. This is the basic scheme:
UTEMIS Ecosystem
UCS — UTEMIS Core Services. UTEMIS Core Services (UCS) is the software that provides the intelligence of the set and manages the smart contracts. It is divided in two blocks:
** 1. UKS: UTEMIS Kernel Service. ** (UKS) is the core of the system. It works like an application server, and, to maximize security, it’s access is restricted for all services but UWS. On top of that UWS can only access UKS through the API that directs the communication protocol. The UKS functionalities are:
- Manage database queries
- Validate economic transactions
- Validate reputation transactions
- User authentication
- Users permissions
- Executing scheduled tasks
- Generate reports.
*2. UWS : UTEMIS Web Services *(UWS) is the hub that connects the rest of the applications with UKS. All services (internal and external) will go through UWS. Which has to validate the queries and return the answer to the corresponding application. UWS is the trusted intermediary of all services that form UTEMIS. An important function of UWS is to be responsible for writing in the blockchain of the UTEMIS token and in the reputation blockchain the results of each transaction.
UBP — UTEMIS Backend Platform. UTEMIS Backend Platform (UBP) administers the interface of each UTEMIS customer. UBP will be accessible from a variety of devices that includes desktop computers, UBW web applications, mobile devices (using UBM), or the official UTEMIS app that will be available for both Android and iOS. UTEMIS customers can use UBP to configure and manage the UTEMIS service. Some functionalities that are customizable are:
- Order management.
- Collection / payment management
- Management and configuration of the product catalog.
- Pricing and discounts.
- Stock control.
- Report generation.
- Store configuration
UFP — UTEMIS Frontend Platform. UTEMIS Frontend Platform is the open interface of the UTEMIS system. Where both customers and future customers can access, login and register. UFP will have two types of access. UFW is the web environment and UFM for the mobile environment, that of course will be available through the Android and iOS apps. Same as UBP, UFP will work synchronized with the UFP, UWS, UKS, UWS and UFP loops.
Database. UTEMIS will use MySQL (a relational database management system) as the primary database for storing information, data and the parameters necessary for the proper functioning of the UTEMIS ecosystem. The structure of the database will emphasize security and flexibility of the entire architecture. The MySQL database will store the UTEMIS customer’s information. It will also execute the clone function of all the transactions carried out in the Ethereum blockchain — both the economic and reputational transactions.
Blockchain. UTEMIS will use the Ethereum blockchain to store both economic and reputational transactions. The use of this technology offers the transparency and security necessary for the success of the system, since it offers the possibility of using a transaction scanner so that, anyone that wants to, can verify the data related to a specific transaction, both economic and reputational: date and time, origin account, destination account and value, among others.
The UTEMIS Business Model
UTEMIS is a B2B platform geared to building trust by stressing and decentralizing merchant reputation, transaction assurance and trading efficiency. It is focused in Latin America and it is integral with the UTEMIS token, this being essential to protect merchants from the vagaries and arbitrariness of local governmental interventions. In this, UTEMIS follows the proven business model of the leading Chinese e-commerce giants with a strong emphasis on reputation. For the reason given, the UTEMIS cryptocurrency is a necessary complement with the potential of transforming the entire Latin American region into a single economic space. UTEMIS ICO proceeds will be invested in speeding up the development of the technological platform and in hiring a massive salesforce to spark growth in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
UTEMIS expects revenues of $650 million (US Dollars) by the end of 2018 by monetizing this Value Proposition with three types of income:
- Advertising: Signing up at UTEMIS is free for companies. But certain services such as advertising, an expanded view of the entire shop, introducing all the company’s product references, etc. are only available through our freemium model (this is a type of business model where the basic service is free and customers have to pay if they want to use more).
- Transaction per payment: UTEMIS will charge to the seller (not to the buyer) a small transaction fee. This way the buyer is always presented with the final costs, there are no surprises for the buyer in terms of price.
- Escrow account working capital: UTEMIS will use very conservative financial instruments to monetize the money that is temporarily stored in the escrow account.
Promise of Single E-Commerce Ecosystem
Trust and reputation are the fuel that drives business growth. By decentralizing their reputation on the Ethereum Blockchain, businesses that are honest will thrive, and those that are not will find themselves driven out from the system. And for the first time ever 100% of this outcome depends on them.
By decentralizing businesses reputations for everyone to see and exposing them to new business opportunities we can finally give millions of people the opportunity they deserve. Bitcoin was not created to convince fiat currencies to protect consumers instead of governments. Bitcoin was created to start something new, something fundamentally better. It is for this same reason that we are creating UTEMIS.
To know more about the UTEMIS Project and their trusted development team, visit:
Official Website
Whitepaper
BCT Official ICO and ANN thread
Telegram Channel
by Dale1075