*Electronic currency*

Instead of using cash to expense, consumers able to make any payment through internet such as electronic currency. Electronic currentcy (e-currency) also known as e-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency. It involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. This ia a very new market, which has been generated many payment systems online. E-currencies is a very exciting and lucrative business that you can operate anywhere in the world through the internet. Examples of electronic micropayment system that involves are PayLoadz, BitPass, Beenz, Peppercoin, Digitcash and others.

Let us study how well the e-currency work in the world!

How all this systems function?

Secure e-Book and PAYLOADZ

"EARN EASY MONEY FROM PAYLOADZ"

Payloadz is a service to sell intangible products such as softwares, e-books, digital art, manuals, articles and files. It is an automated delivery service. This means that seller can go on vacation without worrying about sending download links to the consumers every time a payment is made. These files can be either download via hyperlink or sent via e-mail based upon seller's product. Payloadz also has an easy intergration with paypal. Payloadz services can be used depending upon seller's sales and products file size.

Benefits:

• Secure file storage



• Automated delivery of your digital goods immediately after payment



• sell anywhere online: you can own site, our site, eBay and more.



• Support downloads and CD fulfillment
  

BITPASS

Bitpass was an online payment system for digital content and services. It was founded in December of 2002. Bitpass worked like a prepaid telephone card or Paypal. This stored-value amount could be used to purchase digital content or services. Bitpass enables online commerce by making it easy and safe to buy and sell. But, Bitpass was closed from 26 Jan 2007. Online payments have become more competitive over recent months.

Benefits:

• Save time. With Bitpass, you do not need to re-enter billing information with every new purchases.



• Protect your privacy. Bitpass shields your billing and contact information, giving you more control over your private data.



• Save money. Bitpass allows you to buy digital content in seconds, at hundreds of sites, and reduces the impact of credit card fees that would normally be passed on to the buyer.



• Make online shopping more convenient. Bitpass streamlines online purchases and subscriptions, and gives you an easy way to pay for small-ticket itmes.



• Access high-quality content. Bitpass enabled sites offer a wide variety of independent content that is hard to find elsewhere.

With electronic currency, it able to make visitors and customers more profitable!!

Sources: http://www.gold-pages.net/BitPass.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_money

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/bitpass

https://www.payloadz.com/

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies

Mobile payment (also referred to as mobile web payment or WAP billing) is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their mobile phone, SmartPhone, Personal Digital Assistant(PDA) or other such device. The consumers can pay without needed cash,cheque or even their credit card. However, mobile payment is still not very popular in Malaysia. Currently, there are only some of the companies adopt mobile payment system such as Maxis, MayBank, CIMB and etc.

Mobile Money or MM Wallet is one of the online payment. MM Wallet unlocks the power of the mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere using a mobile phone coupled with 6 digit security PIN via sms. This can give the freedom to the consumers to buy things online and pay the merchant using mobile phone without being physically present at the store .

Mobile payment system provide a safe and secure condition for consumers as well as merchant. With mobile payment, consumers do not have to be concern of cash, cheque or credit card handling problems or fraud. Furthermore, it is very fast and efficient. Mobile Money guarantees that merchants are paid in 2 working days. Normal credit card or cheque will require at least 3 to 4 days for clearance. Besides, there are also no minimum monthly transaction, no rental fee and even no Merchant Account is required.

Mobile payment system is an easy and convenient way to make payment. It is especially useful for the person who are lazy to wait a long queue to make payment or even the person who is busy and do not have time to go to make payment. I think mobile payment will become more and more popular in our country in the future.

References:

www.neowave.com.my/mobilemoney_overview.asp

http://www.wikipedia.com/

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process if attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as trustwothy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter detail at website. Phishing technique was describes in 1987 and first record use in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing probably influence by phreaking and alludes to baits used to catch financial information and password.

Examples of Phishing:
In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. A legitimate Paypal communication will always greet the user with his or her real name, not just with a generic greeting . Note that many phishing emails will include, as a real email from PayPal would, large warnings about never giving out your password in case of a phishing attack.

Another example of Phishing form eBay:

Next, Phising example is sample bogus e-mail from Citibank:

Prevention of Phishing:

1) Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites.

This approach is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check websites against the list. It is switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains.

2) Helping to identify legitimate sites
Preventing it depends on some reliable way to determine a website's real identity.

3) Augmenting password logins.

The website ask users to select a personal image, and display this user-selected image . The users are instructed to enter a password only when they see the image they selected.

4) Eliminating phishing mail.

Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. These approaches rely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails

5) Monitoring and takedown.

Several offer likely to suffer from phishing scams round-the-clock services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down phishing websites.

References: http://www.wikipedia.com/

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

What is a 3rd party certification? 3rd party certification is a way to provide a better assurance to the business and the consumer. It is actually achieved by displaying an independent organization's trust mark or seal on an approved participant's web site. One of the 3rd party certification program is VeriSign. VeriSign is the leading Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Authority enabling secure e-commerce, communications, and interactions for Web sites, intranets, and extranets.

How does it work? An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel enabling encryption of the data during transmission. Encryption scrambles the data, essentially creating an envelope for message privacy. Each SSL Certificate consists of a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information and the private key is used to decipher it. When a Web browser points to a secured domain, a Secure Sockets Layer handshake authenticates the server (Web site) and the client (Web browser).

Furthermore, every VeriSign® SSL Certificate is created for a particular server in a specific domain for a verified business entity. When the SSL handshake occurs, the browser requires authentication information from the server. If the information does not match or the certificate has expired, the browser displays an error message or warning.

VeriSign is the most recognized name in online security. It provide an easy and reliable way to the web site visitors to establish trust online.

Reference:

http://www.verisign.com/

How safeguard our personal and financial data?

As the technology underlying e-commence has become more complex and more intertwined, the opportunities for intrusion and attack have increased. Teenage hackers, industrial spies, corporate insiders, agents of foreign governments, and criminal elements have taken advantage of the situation.

Let's look at some ways to protect your all-important user data from loss and/or unauthorised access!!

• Strong passwords
  

If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it was too late.

The secure way is to use proper passwords, but please avoid sequences or repeated characters. such as"12345678," "222222," "abcdefg," or adjacent letters. Besides, make the password lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal.

• Biometric systems

Fingerprint scanners, iris scanners, facial recognition systems, and voice recognition all are examples of biometric systems that recognize a person by a physical trait. Biometric systems can identify a person by matching the individual's biometric traits against a previously stored version. Thus, the company consume this systems can make the value products more secure.

• Firewall

Basically, a firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your property. In fact, that's why its called a firewall. Its job is similar to a physical firewall that keeps a fire from spreading from one area to the next. As you read through this article, you will learn more about firewalls, how they work and what kinds of threats they can protect you from. For example, you often hear people in companies say things like, "I can't use that site because they won't let it through the firewall."

One of the best things about a firewall from a security standpoint is that it stops anyone on the outside from logging onto a computer in your private network. While this is a big deal for businesses, most home networks will probably not be threatened in this manner. Still, putting a firewall in place provides some peace of mind.

• Encryption

Encryption is one of the safeguard. Encryption is the conversion of data into a secret code for storage in the databases and transmission over network. The sender uses an encryption algorithm to convert the original message into a coded equivalent. At the receiving end the cipher text is decoded back into clear text. This can prevent leaking and lost of data.

Video: Clip on it~~ It is an example of tape ecryption

Sources :

Efraim Turban, Electronic Commerce A managerial perspective, 2006

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/create.mspx

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/firewall.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1OPbg3PS-s

Revenue model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

Revenue models analysis and customer adoption trends is essential in order to plan a portal venture successfully. The five basic portal revenue models are access revenues, advertising revenues, subscription revenues, transaction revenues, and micro-transaction revenues.
In the face of slowing subscriber growth, mobile operators are concentrating on data services. Revenue for network operators will increasingly be derived from data access. The major operators such as NTT DoCoMo are attempting to maintain their control over the data services customers will access. The network operators developing their own versions of these services with other firms to acquire them. Thus, the operators are positioning themselves as gatekeepers, charging customers an access fee to connect with their service and content providers.

Advertising revenues are derived from companies paying a fee to advertise their products on a portal site. In the web portal space, Google, Amazon and eBay are advertising or direct marketing funded. On the surface, the content appears to come at a bargain price, but deeper analysis reveals that the price is sustained by advertising. Internet advertising is more than the selling of visual-impact ads; it is also the sale of direct links from highly used portals to transactional sites.
Subscription Revenues models are designed to obtain up-front payments from customers for access to specific services or content. Subscription fees are usually billed monthly. Delinquent accounts can be canceled immediately. However, a customer who wants to cancel an online subscription often finds that the process takes considerable effort. Many subscription services consider the monthly payment more important than a simplified cancellation process, since cancellations mean churn. Adding new subscribers is more expensive and time-consuming than retaining current ones. The subscription model attracts customers with services that enable them to maintain continuous contact with the company.

Transaction revenue models included a match-maker and distribution. In the match-maker model, the supplier, not the intermediary, owns the product. The portal revenues are based on the net revenue or the commission it receives from the product's sale. In some cases, the fee is levied to both supplier and the buyer, and is typically .05-3.0 percent. Commercial transaction-based sites range from eBay to priceline.com. In the distributor model, the intermediary takes ownership of the product, it realizes the total revenues it gets off the product's sale. For example, a supplier purchases a product for $1.00 and resells it for $2.00. The $1.00 is the supplier's margin before costs. Once cost is factored in, however, the gross margin can be substantially less. Amazon.com is a typical example of this model. Micro-transaction revenues are based on a simple pay-as-you-go service and are essentially one-time pay-per-use transactions ranging from a few cents to several dollars. The Finland-based company Sonera is the leader in experimenting with many micro-transaction scenarios. The micro-transaction's cost is added to the customer's phone bill. A flexible billing system is essential to making micro-transaction point-of-sale services feasible. However, some web survivors are finally realizing profits, e.g., Autobytel, MarketWatch.com, and Amazon.com, to name a few.

An example of an e-commerce failure and its causes

Webvan was an online ' credit and delivery ' grocery business, it company's headquatered in Foster City California, USA, which is nearby Silicon Valley. There strategic business is have try to deliver products to customers' within 30 minute window of their choosing and it offered service in ten United Stated markets. There are San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chigago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Sacramento and Orange country. The company had originally hoped to expand to 26 cities.

Webvan was founded in the heyday of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. The founder of Webvan is Louis Borders, who also co-founded the Borders Bookstore in 1971. Webvan's original investor included Goldman Sachs and Yahoo, who encouraged it to rapidly build its own infrastruture (the first mover advantages strategy popularized by Amazon.com)to deliver groceries in a number of cities.

Webvan was closed in July 2001, the causes of Webvan's closed down was none of Webvan's senior executives (or major investors) had any management experience in the supermarket industry, including its CEO George Shaheen who had resigned as head of Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), a management consulting firm, to join the venture. The another cause is the money spent on infrastructure far exceed their sales growth and the company eventually ran out of money, for example, Webvan placed a 1 billion (USD) order with engineering company Bechtel to build its warehouse, bought a fleet of delivery trucks, purchased 30 Sun Mircosystems Enterprise 4500 servers, dozen of Compaq ProLiant Computers and several Cisco systems model 7513 and 7507 routes as well as more than 80 12-inch view sonic colors monitors and at least 115 Herman Miller Aeron Chairs (at over $800 each). Besides, Webvan tried to embrace a total customer satisfaction model without considering that customer especially working customers would like their groceries delivered at night .

From this, Webvan is unable to survive because of lack of management experience and grow its business too fast. Thus, its best to have a good plan and not grow too fast and too soon.

References: www.cnet.com