%20RGB.png)
Your country cheat sheet covering shipping tips, customs clearance and import duties for your eCommerce international shipping needs, eCommerce insights, and more
.jpg)
Southeast Asia (SEA) has been heralded as the next land of opportunity for eCommerce. With online shoppers in markets like Malaysia satisfying their shopping cravings through cross-border eCommerce, it would be ideal for your shipment to sail through customs, reaching your customers safely and on time.
Country IDMYCapital CityKuala LumpurOfficial LanguageBahasa MalaysiaCurrencyRinggit Malaysia (MYR)Population Size32.6 million
Dealing with customs in Southeast Asia could be challenging seeing that each country has its own set of customs regulations, import duties, paperwork and taxes that need to be complied with.
Malaysia’s eCommerce market value is USD 4.1 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to USD 8.0 billion by 2024 according to Statista after adjusting for 2020’s recent events.
While Malaysians are cautious spenders and are wary of fraud from online shopping, they are digitally savvy and love online shopping for the great prices and convenience that it offers. The largest demographic of online shoppers would be Malaysians between 25 and 34 years old - Millennials who are already in the workforce.
This industry will witness growth over the coming years given the increase in government spending on the IT sector, and a high chance of many maintaining online shopping as a habit as the country’s quarantine measures start lifting. Also, with easy access to affordable smartphones and laptops and the rise of mobile internet, internet penetration increases leading to a growing internet population that eCommerce businesses can tap on.
This is a living page that will frequently be updated with insights about:
Malaysia maintains a de minimis value threshold of MYR 500 on inbound shipments.
This means that orders that are brought in below MYR 500 via air freight are not charged additional duties and taxes at Malaysian customs. However, this only applies to air freight shipments and not to other modes of transportation like cross-border trucking or sea freight.
The Royal Malaysian Customs Department values goods using their CIF value (Cost, Insurance and Freight). The CIF value is the total cost of the order itself, the cost of freight and insurance.
If your orders are above MYR500 or are brought in via cross-border trucking or sea freight, they will be charged Sales and Service Tax (SST) of between 5 to 10 per cent of the order’s CIF. Depending on the type of product you’re bringing into Malaysia, import duties of up to 25 per cent can also be levied on your order.
To check the tariff amount for your commodity, you can visit the Royal Malaysian Customs Department’s HS Explorer.
To get a fuller explanation of how these changes could affect your Malaysia-bound imports, check out our article on Malaysia's 2020 de minimis changes.
Sources: Statista - eCommerce Malaysia (2020) | Statista - Main reasons for shopping online in the last 12 months in Malaysia (2016) | Royal Malaysian Customs Department - Valuation
Restricted items that require licenses before going through customs clearance:
Prohibited items that cannot be imported into the market:
This list may change depending on government regulations. Visit the official customs page for the latest version.
The documents you need to clear Malaysian customs include:
This gives product details, shipment volume in kilogram or cubic meter, and serves as a checklist to ensure shipment has been packed correctly or not.
This shows the total shipment value of the order. Helps to determine the import duties and taxes, and eligibility of shipment.
If you are shipping without a logistics partner that can clear customs on your behalf, you may need to include the following shipping documentation as well:
These provide the basics of how you can get your products through Malaysian customs. For a fuller guide on how you can clear Malaysian customs, you might want to check out:
Source: Royal Malaysian Customs Department
Shipping from one country to another, be it an eCommerce delivery or a full container moved via sea freight follows a general set of steps:
You can click on any of the links above to find out more about each step.
The first-mile stage in international shipping refers to the first stage of the shipping supply chain, where it leaves the origin address, be it the merchant’s storefront, office, warehouse or suppliers’ address. Prior to your goods leaving the origin address, the product has to be packaged and labelled appropriately to facilitate smooth cross border shipping.
Great preparation can help minimise the chances of your shipment going missing or getting damaged during delivery. Generally, you'll want to do the following:
If you'd like a more in-depth to each of these steps, you can find more at this preparation guide for merchants.
You can also find out more about what the first mile entails in our first-mile article.
As your shipment arrives at the origin country's port or airport, the parcel would need to be cleared by local customs for export. This is where the customs officers will inspect the parcel’s contents and shipping documents and determine if it can be cleared for export. If you’re planning to ship large volumes, you may want to check if you need to produce specific customs documentation for export on your local customs websites.
You can find a list of these on our Customs Clearance in SEA resource page.
When it comes to freight options, shipping your goods to Malaysia can generally be done in two ways - air freight and sea freight. Cross-border trucking is also available if your origin address has land access to your Malaysian addresses, such as from Thailand or Singapore into Peninsular Malaysia.
For merchants shipping B2C parcels, air freight is the faster option, especially if you don’t have a consistent order volume and need your parcels to reach the destination country quickly.
On the other hand, sea freight is generally more cost-effective for shipping in bulk. However, it is slightly slower than air freight. When managing your inventory, you’ll need to take into account the estimated delivery date so that you can plan out your supply chain accordingly.
Cross-border trucking provides a middle ground between air freight’s speed and sea freight’s cost-effectiveness. If your lanes have cross-border trucking access, in some cases it makes more sense to use cross-border trucking over air freight for the cost savings it provides for both B2B and B2C order volumes.
Once your order arrives in Malaysia’s airport, port, or border checkpoint your shipment and any associated documents will be inspected by customs officers to determine if your product is allowed to enter Malaysia.
To clear customs for import into Malaysia, you or your shipping partner would generally need to provide the following documents:
More information about this is available in this guide’s customs clearance section.
Once your shipment has cleared customs, it will enter the distribution stage of the shipping journey. Usually, FCL (Full-container-load) shipments can be delivered directly to its destination after clearing customs at the port.
LCL (Less-than-container-load) shipments need to be unpacked at a container freight station (CFS) and sorted so each shippers’ order can head to their respective last-mile destinations.
B2C parcels, similarly, need to be at a transport hub to sort them out before the last mile journey can begin. However, if the address is beyond an address that can be reached by vans or trucks, an additional domestic flight will be needed before your shipments can be sorted or sent to last-mile delivery.
Ramadan also brings with it various last mile challenges, you can read more about that in our article on tackling last-mile issues that arise during Ramadan in Malaysia.
Different countries have different steps at origin customs clearance and different freight modes. To find out more about these for specific origin countries, check out our posts below:
Our next section covers Malaysia's eCommerce insights to power your online promotions and campaigns.
Sources: Statista - most used online payment method 2020
Malaysia’s eCommerce market value is USD 4.1 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to USD 8.0 billion by 2024 according to Statista after adjusting for 2020’s recent events. Malaysians are fairly fond of cross-border online purchases, with 40 per cent of their online purchases coming from outside Malaysia.
While Malaysians are cautious spenders and are wary of fraud from online shopping, they are digitally savvy and love online shopping for the great prices and convenience that it offers. The largest demographic of online shoppers would be Malaysians between 25 and 34 years old - Millennials who are already in the workforce.
This industry will witness growth over the coming years given the increase in government spending on the IT sector, and a high chance of many maintaining online shopping as a habit as the country’s quarantine measures start lifting. Also, with easy access to affordable smartphones and laptops and the rise of mobile internet, internet penetration increases leading to a growing internet population that eCommerce businesses can tap on.
There are also some roadblocks that you’ll need to plan around when creating your Malaysian eCommerce campaigns. To find out more about these roadblocks and how to overcome them, check out our Overview of Malaysia’s eCommerce Market.
Sources: Statista - Malaysia eCommerce | MDEC - National eCommerce Strategic Roadmap
Most Malaysians are online shoppers, but exact statistics tend to vary based on sources. If you’re looking at export.gov, almost half of Malaysia’s 32-million-strong population shop online. If you’re looking at Hootsuite and Wearesocial’s data, 61 per cent of Malaysia’s 32 million-strong population, or 19.8 million people are online shoppers.
To Malaysians, the internet has become a significant part of their lives. About nine in 10 Malaysians 15 years and older use the internet and on average, they spend more than eight hours a day online. Almost one in four use some of this time to fuel the eCommerce economy as online shoppers, or eCommerce consumers.
Surprisingly, men are just as likely to shop online as women, based on a study of the eCommerce habits of undergraduate and postgraduate students in Malaysia. Despite featuring more female participants, the study found that at least 50 per cent of both male and female respondents shopped once a month or more.
Better prices (72%)
Access to items not available in my country (49%) and Discovering new an interesting products
Higher product quality (29%)
Input from friends and family is particularly important for Malaysians. Word-of-mouth referral also encourages brick-and-mortar shoppers to try out e-commerce. Reviews are a major factor for 71% of Malaysians’ online purchase decisions in 2019, according to research by vase.ai.
Surfing social media (66%) and Direct influence from friends and family
Other Offline stimuli
Malaysians tend to be quite price-conscious and are also wary of fraud. Discounts, promotions and indicators such as positive reviews can go a long way in helping you grow your Malaysian online store.
For a more in-depth look at all these factors, check out our article on who are Malaysia’s online shoppers.
Sources: export.gov | We Are Social (2019) | Management & Science University, Malaysia | vase.ai | New Straits Times | Paypal
To find out more on what Malaysians look out for in fashion modest fashion, check out our articles on:
This is a summarised version of our more in-depth articles exploring different health and beauty categories in Malaysia. To find out more or to see our sources for these, check out our following series:
This is a summarised version of one of our blog posts. To find out more, check out our post about Malaysia’s Top 4 eCommerce product categories
Ramadan is also a period with high online spending in Malaysia, but is also a time when Malaysians spend more on relatively different types of products. To find out they’re buying during the period, check out one of our recent posts about what Malaysians buy online during Ramadan
Primary Sources: Statista - eCommerce Malaysia | iPrice | Easystore | e27 | Malaysia Commercial Guide | International Trade Administration | Statista: Electronics & Media Malaysia | Statista: Consumer Electronics Malaysia | kr Asia | SoyaCincau | New Straits Times
Malaysians are fond of cross-border eCommerce, which is why many of them shop online on websites like Amazon or Alibaba’s Tmall.
The International Trade Administration (ITA), US Department of Commerce reports that Malaysians like to buy items from the following countries:
Locally, Lazada, Mudah, Lelong, Shopee, and 11street attract a large chunk of Malaysia’s e-commerce consumers. While eCommerce marketplaces that sell to a general audience have the most views, category-specific marketplaces like Zalora for fashion still get a large share of traffic too.
In terms of B2C marketplaces, iPrice’s ‘Map of eCommerce’ Malaysia* mentions the following are the top five e-commerce platforms in the country. (numbers updated to Q1 - 2020)
If you'd like a deeper look at these, find out more in our main article on who are Malaysia's online shoppers.
Sources: export.gov | iPrice | e27 | Statista - most used online payment method 2020 | Nielsen
Singles’ Day, 12.12, 10.10, Chinese New Year and Ramadan are some of the biggest online sales events in Malaysia.
Singles’ Day & 12.12
9.9 and 10.10
Culture-driven Shopping Spree
Other popular shopping seasons include:
If you’d like to find out more, we cover each of these periods in more detail in our post on Malaysia’s major online shopping events.
EXPORTSRankMarket1Singapore2China3United States4Japan5ThailandIMPORTSRankMarket1China2Singapore3United States4Japan5Taiwan
Sources: Euromonitor International "Economy, Finance and Trace: Malaysia" (2018) | Public Holidays (2020)
%20RGB.png)