Southeast Asia e-commerce reaches $226bn as 69% of shoppers compare products with AI

Southeast Asia's digital economy is set to reach $368bn in gross merchandise value in 2026, up 17% year on year, and e-commerce accounts for $226bn of it — 18% more than in 2025. The figures come from the 11th e-Conomy SEA report, "Building the Intelligent Economy," released on 21 October in Singapore by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company. The finding that matters most to online sellers sits in discovery: 31% of searches in the region are now multimodal, 69% of shoppers use AI to compare complex purchases such as electronics, and 93% say they already trust AI in their purchasing journey. "Southeast Asia's AI story is shifting from how many people use it to how deeply they use it," said Florian Hoppe, partner at Bain & Company.

The numbers, and the caveat

Adoption is fast and shallow at once. Generative AI has reached 243 million people, 58% of the working population, scaling four times faster than mobile internet did — in under three years. But regional use sits at 5 to 7 quadrillion tokens per capita, roughly 10% of US levels, and most users stay on free tiers. Consumers generate about 60% of regional tokens, mostly for everyday work and study; enterprise workloads are strongest in Singapore and Malaysia, at 45–60% of usage there.

Intent is running ahead of spending. 72% of users rely on everyday automations, and 75% would let an AI agent find the best price and complete a purchase on their behalf. 62% trust AI tools more than a year ago, citing proven track records (56%), growing familiarity (55%) and output accuracy (53%) — while still demanding privacy protections (44%) and the ability to undo autonomous actions (30%). In travel, standalone GenAI platforms now capture 26% of planning journeys, ahead of social media's 23%. The report projects AI demand to surge up to 60-fold by 2030, and capital is following: companies with core AI products took 80% of deal value in the last six months, up from 30% in H2 2024, with $20bn of private capital into AI compute and digital infrastructure over 12 months.

The caveat matters as much as the numbers. e-Conomy SEA is published by a consortium that includes a platform and an investor, and the conversion and order uplifts come from initial company case studies, not audited sales. GMV measures transaction value passing through platforms, not store margins. The panel covers the region's six largest markets and leaves out the smaller ones, and the 60-fold figure is explicitly a projection. The same 75% uplift is described as order volume in Bain's own report summary and as average order value in the press release — a reminder to read single figures as directional.

Where the shortlist is now built

Discovery has moved to a layer that reads structured data, not a page. If an assistant cannot parse your title, attributes, availability and price, your product never enters the comparison — and the comparison is where the shortlist is built. The same report shows shoppers still verify before they buy, which is why the details an assistant reads and the details your storefront shows have to be the same ones.

This week

• Audit your ten best-selling SKUs: title, attributes, availability, price and shipping terms in plain, consistent fields.
• Ask an external assistant to compare two of your products, and note what it gets wrong or leaves out.
• Fix the mismatches on those ten SKUs first; a comparison is only as good as the data behind it.

AI is now the first comparison — make sure your catalogue can be read

Your product needs to reach the shortlist before it reaches the shopper. vcity keeps your catalogue and your storefront in one place, so the details an external assistant reads are the same ones your store shows — and its AI Robot guides your visitors at any hour, answering the questions a shopping assistant would ask. Start with the products that carry your revenue.

Create your store →

Sources:

• https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/sea/e-conomy-sea-2026/ (primary — press release, 21 Oct 2026: $368bn GMV +17%, e-commerce $226bn +18%, 31% multimodal searches, 69% AI comparison, 93% trust, 243m people / 58% of the working population, 5–7 quadrillion tokens per capita, 72% everyday automations, 75% agentic buying, 62% trust, 56% / 55% / 53% trust drivers, 44% privacy and 30% undo conditions, 26% vs 23% travel planning, 80% of deal value, $20bn infrastructure)
• https://www.bain.com/insights/e-conomy-sea-2026 (primary — report page and executive summary "Building the AI economy": SEA-6 panel, 243m / 58%, ~10% of US usage per capita, ~60% consumer usage, 62% trust, "more than two-thirds" on everyday automations, 75% order-volume uplift, 80% of private deployment, $20bn infrastructure)
• https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-globe/google-asia/e-conomy-sea-report-2026 (coverage — Google's summary of the same report: $226bn +18%, 10% conversion lift and 75% order-volume uplift)
• https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-monetization-in-asean-nascent-but-usage-boosts-e-commerce-report2 (coverage — Kentaro Takeda, 21 Oct 2026, 19:11 JST: AI monetization in ASEAN still "nascent"; report presented in Singapore)