Get ready for peak season: Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong

Peak season exposes friction that often goes unnoticed throughout the rest of the year. A missing payment method, an unnecessary checkout step, or an inconsistent experience between online and in-store can all impact conversion when traffic is soaring.

Payment issues are close to universal: 100% of Hong Kong merchants and nearly all in Malaysia (97%) and Singapore (94%) were affected by payment performance issues in the past 12 months.

For businesses, those payment issues can have a big impact: 66% of Hong Kong consumers and 59% in both Singapore and Malaysia say payment errors damage their perception of a retailer. 26% of Hong Kong shoppers report abandoning the purchase and avoid the retailer afterwards.

Questions to ask your team

• Are we offering the payment methods customers are most likely to use during peak season?

• Have we reviewed the checkout experience across every channel?

• Where are our customers dropping out before completing payment?

• Are there points of friction that become more noticeable as transaction volumes increase?

Peak season is traditionally built on blanket discounts. While these promotions create short-term demand, they also compress margins.

Increasingly, retailers are replacing one-size-fits-all promotions with personalized incentives that reflect customer behavior, purchase history, and loyalty. How far to take that is a local judgment: in Malaysia, 30% of consumers find it helpful when retailers track their purchases and browsing history, while 37% find it invasive. 28% of Singaporean shoppers would like to see highly contextual, non-intrusive personalization options.

The goal isn't just to sell more during peak season but to strengthen customer relationships beyond that moment. As Priyanka Agrawal, Global Retail Lead at Adyen, says, “Peak season shouldn't be about offering everyone the same discount. The retailers seeing the strongest results are using real-time customer data to deliver personalized offers that reward loyalty while protecting margins.”

Questions to ask your team

• Are our promotions rewarding our most valuable customers?

• Can we personalize offers across online and in-store experiences?

• Do we have visibility into promotion abuse, coupon misuse, and refund policy abuse?

• Can we recognize returning customers and tailor incentives in real time?

• Have we balanced promotional investment against long-term customer value?

Loyal customers purchase more frequently, spend more, and engage differently with promotions and returns. Those same customer journeys also become attractive targets for abuse, with fraudsters exploiting promotions, refunds, and loyalty programs.

The cost is already visible. In Malaysia, 94% of retailers report being targeted by or falling victim to payment fraud in the past 12 months, with average losses of RM707k among those affected. 

Customers are also security-conscious: In Hong Kong, 41% of shoppers feel more confident when retailers require two-factor authentication, and only 9% would sacrifice security for a faster checkout.

Questions to ask your team

• Have we reviewed fraud rules using last year's peak season performance?

• Which rules generated the most false positives during previous peak periods?

• Are authentication settings supporting conversion as well as risk management?

• Can we respond quickly if fraud patterns change during this period?

Most retailers spend months preparing systems for peak season. Fewer review the operational processes that support them. 

That is harder when teams are stretched. 95% of Singaporean retailers report barriers to deeper AI integration, most often competing priorities or limited resources (39%), difficulty integrating AI into existing systems (38%), and a shortage of internal AI skills (35%).

Clear ownership, monitoring, and escalation processes help teams respond quickly when transaction volumes increase or unexpected issues arise.

Questions to ask your team

• Does every team know who owns payment incidents?

• Are escalation paths documented and understood?

• Have support, finance, and operations teams aligned on peak season processes?

• Are dashboards and alerts configured around the metrics that matter most?

Peak season can teach you a lot, and it’s worth making time to review payment performance, customer behavior, and operational trends after Cyber Monday is over. You can use that data to help you build a stronger foundation for the rest of the calendar year, and get more insights into how your customer journey is changing.

One trend worth watching this year is the rise of agentic commerce. 52% of Hong Kong merchants and 47% of Malaysian retailers reported plans to integrate AI-driven or agentic commerce solutions as part of their 2026 growth strategy. You can use what you learn from peak season behavior to continue defining your agentic commerce vision of the future.

Questions to ask your team

• Which metrics will define success beyond revenue?

• Are we measuring authorization performance alongside conversion?

• How will we review what worked and what didn't?

• Which opportunities should become priorities after peak season?

Customer experience

• Can customers pay using their preferred payment methods in every market we serve?

• Have we reviewed checkout performance across every channel?

• Are there any unnecessary points of friction before payment?

Promotions and loyalty

• Are our promotions rewarding the right customers, rather than everyone?

• Can we personalize offers across online and in-store experiences?

• Have we reviewed safeguards against promotion and policy abuse?

Payments and risk

• Have fraud settings been reviewed for seasonal shopping behavior?

• Are we monitoring false positives alongside fraud rates?

• Is our authentication strategy optimized for both conversion and risk?

Operations

• Does every team understand incident ownership and escalation?

• Are dashboards and alerts ready before peak traffic begins?

• Have refund and dispute processes been reviewed?

Performance

• Have we agreed on the metrics we'll monitor throughout peak season?

• Do we have a plan to review performance after peak season ends?

• Have we identified opportunities for improvement next year?

The retailers that perform best during peak season are the ones that have reviewed their customer experience, aligned their teams, and prepared for how shoppers actually behave during the busiest shopping period of the year.

Across APAC, customers have already adopted the tools that make buying faster. What they have not adopted is patience for a payment that fails. Peak season lasts a few weeks, but the decisions made before it can improve performance long-term.