e commerce payment

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.
A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.
Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as Business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market).
Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.
The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not.The earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.
1990: Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer. 1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn published Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312063598. 1994: Netscape released the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials were also commercially available, as were cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 in late 1994 introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secure. 1995: Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio started broadcasting. Dell and Cisco began to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web. 1999: business.com was sold for US $7.5 million, which was purchased in 1997 for US $150,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster was launched. 2000: The dot-com bust. 2003: Amazon.com had its first year with a full year of profit. In the United States, some electronic commerce activities are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive.[1] Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the FTC has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in corporate privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers’ personal information.[2] As result, any corporate privacy policy related to e-commerce activity may be subject to enforcement by the FTC.
Contemporary electronic commerce involves everything from ordering "digital" content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to "meta" services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce.
On the consumer level, electronic commerce is mostly conducted on the World Wide Web. An individual can go online to purchase anything from books, grocery to expensive items like real estate. Another example will be online banking like online bill payments, buying stocks, transferring funds from one account to another, and initiating wire payment to another country. All these activities can be done with a few keystrokes on the keyboard.
On the institutional level, big corporations and financial institutions use the internet to exchange financial data to facilitate domestic and international business. Data integrity and security are very hot and pressing issues for electronic commerce these days.
One of the main requirements in e-commerce is the ability to accept a form of electronic payment. This form of electronic payment is referred to as financial electronic data interchange (FEDI). FEDI has become increasingly popular over the last number of years due to the widespread use of the internet based shopping and banking.
Over the years, credit cards have become one of the most common forms of payment for e-commerce transactions. In the early years of B2C, many consumers were apprehensive of using their credit cards over the internet because of fear that their credit card numbers would get stolen. However, due to increased security with credit card companies such as VISA, American Express, and MasterCard there is widespread use of credit card use over the internet, especially in North America.
Despite this widespread use in North America, there are still a number of countries such as China, India and Pakistan that have some problems to overcome in regard to credit card security. In the meantime, the use of smartcards has become extremely popular. A Smartcard is similar to a credit card; however it contains an embedded 8-bit microprocessor and uses electronic cash which transfers from the consumers’ card to the sellers’ device. A popular smartcard initiative is the VISA Smartcard. Using the VISA Smartcard you can transfer electronic cash to your card from your bank account, and you can then use your card at various retailers and on the internet.
These are companies that enable financial transactions to transpire over the internet. Types of transactions include: C2C, C2B, and/or B2B. One of the best known and most successful financial cybermediaries is PayPal. This free online service allows consumers and/or businesses to send money to anyone with an email address in 45 countries. PayPal is accepted by thousands of businesses worldwide and is the preferred payment method on eBay.com. PayPal is now owned by ebay.com.
Many of the mediaries permit consumers to establish an account quickly, and to transfer funds into their online accounts from a traditional bank account (typically via ACH transactions), and vice versa, after verification of the consumer's identity and authority to access such bank accounts. Also, the larger mediaries further allow transactions to and from credit card accounts, although such credit card transactions are usually assessed a fee (either to the recipient or the sender) to recoup the transaction fees charged to the mediary.
The speed and simplicity with which cyber-mediary accounts can be established and used have contributed to their widespread use, although the risk of abuse, theft and other problems—with disgruntled users frequently accusing the mediaries themselves of wrongful behavior—is associated with them.