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Daily Star --Lebanese shoppers log on to e-commerce (E-commerce related)
BEIRUT: Despite the country’s notoriously slow and insecure Internet, businesses in Lebanon have begun to tap into a demand for online shopping, fueled by social media networking and a newfound consumer confidence in the safety of credit card purchasing.
“We saw the wave, and we decided to ride it at the right moment,” says Haytham El-Khoja, the co-founder of Mizalla, a Lebanese website set up two months ago that advertises itself as the region’s first online mall.
While well-established international companies have been available in the country for some time, local businesses have remained wary of branching into the market, perhaps put off by consumers’ mistrust of online credit card security, the country’s poor Internet and its lackadaisical approach to formal addresses.