CNMI Department of Commerce economic development officer Kioshi Cody is encouraging local businesses to tap into the e-commerce platform so that the CNMI can be the first U.S. territory to have locally registered websites with credit card processing.
CNMI Department of Commerce economic development officer Kioshi Cody, center standing, speaks during a recent meeting of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce at the Hyatt.
Photo by K-Andrea Evarose S. Limol
At the first Saipan Chamber of Commerce general membership meeting held by its new leadership on Wednesday at the Hyatt, Cody said the CNMI has been “left in the dust” when it comes to e-commerce.
He said together with the Small Business Development Center, he has been in discussions with partners in California to look into the issue.
Cody said the Commonwealth does not have much of a presence online in terms of retail sales which, he added, are an untapped potential.
He noted that online retail platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Jumia have each recently reported billions of dollars of earnings in their most recent quarterly earnings.
Amazon recently reported record-setting quarterly earnings amounting to $100 billion.
Alibaba, Amazon’s counterpart in China, reported $34 billion, Cody said.
“Africa has Jumia, and they are a $5.5 billion company right now,” he added.
“To me, I felt like this was definitely a sorely lacking area of focus and I wanted to divert as much of my attention and focus on that so that we can go ahead and get even a piece of that slice.
“We found some friends over in California who are very excited to look at this potential opportunity [for] us in terms of getting us the ability to do our credit card processing on locally registered websites,” he said.
“So that means that we are running out of excuses not to be the next Etsy, Shopify, Wix, Amazon, etc.
“We have possibly identified a bank that’s willing to ride the risk of doing our credit card processing. They just wanted to collect a little bit of information just about the type of business units that we have out here, certain industries, so that they can go ahead and make a formal deliberation…. We are anticipating trying to get a ‘yes’ from them within a month….”
Cody encourages private partners who are interested in this endeavor to reach out to him to submit information about their company.
The information must include the company name, the company owner’s name, pre-Covid-19 sales, e-commerce goals, and an area that the company would like help with such as shipping.
“If you can give us that information, we’re going to go ahead and compile all of this information, and I’m going to go ahead and sit down with our partners in California and just let them know that this is what our community has said they would like to get some help with, and that these are the numbers that we have so far,” Cody said.
“They understand that we’re not as big as Guam, so they’re not looking to make a trillion dollars off our credit card processing, but I think that their enthusiasm in really helping us engage in this [endeavor] is going to be really exciting for 2021.
“And then, you know, the great thing about that is that we can show Guam how to do it, and that’s just the cherry on top for me,” said Cody.
For more information and/or to participate in this data collection, contact Kioshi Cody at 588-8568.
