Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop
Are All Raising Fees.
That's Not a Coincidence.
Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop are all raising fees at the same time. Most brands are complaining about margin. Almost nobody is asking why it's all happening now. The answer tells you everything about what's coming — and why the brands that see it early will win everything.
Why fees are going up now
Shopee raised its commission. Lazada followed. TikTok Shop — the platform everyone moved to for lower fees — is now catching up fast. The cost of being visible across all three keeps climbing every quarter. Brands feel it. Sellers complain about it. And most of them respond the same way: absorb the cost, raise their price slightly, and keep going.
But stop and ask the question nobody is asking: why are they raising fees so aggressively right now?
Because they see what's coming. A business that believes its moat is permanent does not need to extract maximum value today. A business that knows disruption is arriving — and is trying to maximise earnings before the wave hits — raises prices as fast as the market will tolerate. Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop are all doing this simultaneously. That is not a coincidence.
I've seen this before
In 2020, I said TikTok livestream commerce would be the next big wave for Southeast Asia. Most people thought I was talking about entertainment. I was talking about commerce infrastructure. The proof came first in Indonesia — then Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand. Billions in GMV flowing through a format that barely existed two years earlier.
I am saying the same thing now about AI Commerce. And I am more confident this time, because the evidence is not a prediction — it is already being built, funded, and shipped by the largest technology companies in the world.
The signals are everywhere
This is not speculative. The four largest technology ecosystems on earth are simultaneously building the infrastructure for AI-driven commerce. Each signal points in the same direction.
Four independent ecosystems, all converging on the same outcome: the AI agent becomes the discovery layer, the comparison engine, and the transaction interface. The platform — which existed to do exactly those three things — is being replaced at every layer simultaneously.
First, understand why platforms exist
To understand what is being disrupted, you need to understand what platforms were actually built to do. Brands and sellers did not choose Shopee because they loved paying commission. They chose it because the platform solved three problems they could not solve themselves.
Discovery. Millions of buyers already on the platform. A new brand listing on Shopee or Lazada inherited an existing audience instantly. TikTok Shop added the discovery engine of short video on top. Building that audience independently would have taken years and cost more.
Trust. Buyers trusted the platform's payment protection, return policies, and ratings system. That trust transferred to every seller on the platform. An unknown brand could transact with strangers because the platform stood between them.
Transaction infrastructure. Payment processing, checkout, logistics integration, dispute resolution. The platform handled the operational complexity so sellers could focus on product and fulfilment.
AI agents are replacing platforms
The platform era worked because buyers needed a single place to discover, compare, and buy. Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop each owned a version of that journey. Every brand that wanted to participate had to pay for access.
AI agents change the fundamental structure of that journey. The agent handles discovery — it knows your preferences, searches across the web, and surfaces options without you visiting any marketplace. The agent handles comparison — it evaluates price, reviews, and availability in real time. And increasingly, the agent handles the transaction — completing the purchase on your behalf, directly with the brand.
The platform's three value propositions — discovery, trust, transaction — are being absorbed by the agent layer. What remains is a distribution channel competing on price alone, with no sustainable margin for either the platform or the sellers on it.
This is not a gradual shift. When Apple Intelligence activates on 1.2 billion iPhones, when Google's Universal Cart spans Search and Gmail, when ChatGPT completes purchases without a browser — the transition accelerates. The brands on the right side of it capture everything. The brands still fighting over ranking on Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop lose everything.
What you need to prepare
Here is where most advice stops at the wrong answer. "Get off Shopee, build your own website." Yes — but not just any website. A website built in 2018 for human visitors browsing on a phone is not the answer. That website is as invisible to an AI agent as a brand with no listing at all.
What you need is something different. Not a website. An AI Agent ready website — built to be discovered, parsed, trusted, and transacted with by an AI agent acting on behalf of a buyer.
What that actually means, what it requires, and how to build it — that is what we are covering next.
Published by IMA AI — May 2026.