Electronic currency

Electronic currency is money that cannot be touched or held but can be transacted online. It is borderless which means that you can actually pay or receive e-money from someone on the other side of the world, all through your computer. Payments are made in real time and the money is transacted online instantly. E-moneyalso allows small transfers starting from 1 cent. Obviously e-money can be changed into real paper money any time the owner decides to.

One example of the e-currency systems in Malaysia is http://www.paystone.com./Paystone Technologies Corporation is a private Internet payment and money transfer company dedicated to providing secure, easy, real time Internet transactions. Process micro payments open a whole new world for entrepreneurs of all sizes. Paystone also provides an email money transfer option. A Paystone account holder can send funds to the email address of anyone in many countries around the world. The recipient of the funds signs up for Paystone and can cash out the money to their local bank account.

Due to global commerce consumers find themselves conducting business with companies and people from different parts of the world. This has resulted in a heavy reliance e-currency exchange services to complete cross-continental transactions more efficiently.This influx of e-currencies has created a window of profitable opportunity for those in this business.

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention.

Credit card debt is a burgeoning problem among the campuses. Although most students can handle credit well, a significant minority gets into debt. Causes include beliefs about future earnings, debt attitudes and financial knowledge. Many students have not had financial training and, among those who have, classes do not necessarily cause behavioral changes. Colleges, parents, and public policy makers must work together to resolve the problems of student consumer debt. Suggestions are made for college policy with respect to credit card solicitation.

There are some example of causes of credit card debts:
(1)Americans Slammed by Credit Card Debt
(2)Credit Card Debt on College Campuses

How to get out of ur debts???

There are 3 Steps...

Step 1: Understand Your Spending

Step 2: Repay Sensibly

Step 3: Get financially health

Atlast, Prevent Future Credit Card Debt Don't let credit card companies take advantage of you!

Mobile Payment System in Malaysia: Its potential and consumer's adoption strategies

Mobile payment system (MPS) is a point-of-sale payment made through a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, a smartphone, or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Using MPS, a person with a wireless device could pay for items in a store or settle a restaurant bill without interacting with any staff member. Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd is an example of mobile payment system in Malaysia. Mobile Money (MM) payment system complies with the regulator's stringent requirements. MM Mobile Payment platform allows everyone to pay anyone, at anytime from anywhere with just one SMS. It also allows one to receive money from anyone, from anywhere, at anytime. MM Mobile Payment system is very secure and it is a closed loop payment system. The charter of Mobile Money is to provide Merchants and consumers with a convenient and secure Mobile Payment and Mobile Commerce platform. Its potential and the consumer’s adopt strategies are as follow: The cost of a payment transaction has an effect on consumer adoption of mobile payment system. As an online shopper is attentive to the price of transaction costs of mobile payments should be low enough to make the total cost of the purchase competitive with physical world prices.

Payment systems security is one of the main barriers to electronic and mobile commerce transactions. The key requirements for secure financial transactions in electronic environment include confidentiality, data integrity. Other security factors important for consumer adoption are anonymity and privacy, which relate to use policies of customers’ personal information and purchase records

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumer

Per-paid cash card is a type of card that put in money on the card which you can do over the phone or online and then you use the card to make purchases but you cannot spend more than the balance you have left. A pre-paid card can helps the consumer to control their spending when make purchases.

The application of pre-paid cash card is the consumer need to load some money which he or she wants to put into the pre-paid cash card. The pre-paid cash card helps put an end to last minute ATM trip and constant requests for money. A pre-paid cash card is safer if comparing to carrying cash because cash card can prevent cash being stolen or lost. Many credit card companies nowadays will provide protection to the consumer with the Zero Liability policy which the card will be replaced and the balance transferred to the new card. If the consumer have apply pre-paid cash card, it is convenience for renting cars, making hotel reservation, petrol car filling and etc. There is no an interest change, late fees or over limit free for the pre-paid cash card. Nowadays, many consumers bankrupt because of bad debt of credit cards. Pre-paid cash card are different with credit card. It will control the limit while the credit card is uncontrollable. So, now many consumer choose to apply a pre-paid cash card because it safe and easy.

The threat of online security : how safe is our data?

Online security is any kind of protection you use when you use the Internet. Online security is important because the Internet is not a safe place unless you have adequate protection against the many varieties of threats that exist in cyberspace. When online users browse the websites which contain the threats it will attack or destroy their computers. The threats such as viruses, spyware, adware, scumware, hacker attacks, identity theft and fraud are common occurrence.

The common threat of online security is Denial of Services (DOS) attack is an attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the target computer which may cause the network shut down so it forces to reduced level of services. Attacker is gaining access to the financial information about the business or customers with a view to perpetrating fraud and used the viruses to destroy business data.

The others threat is having poor password options. It is due to lack of knowledge about online security. This type of threat is preventable if the users safeguard their data.

Online fraud which is set up the fake websites or sending e-mail messages that look like legitimate business to trick the users for their personal information such as plishing. Normally, those fake e-mail messages will consists of links that ask users to like to a page that need the user fill in their personal information. In here, users should go through their URL to see whether or not the website is true or fake as safeguards. Our data is safe when all security is being developed well and prevents from surf those unknown website.

Phishing - The Amazon.com Email Scam

What is phishing?

Phishing is a method thieves and con men used to get personal information from you in order to steal your identity and then your money or benefits.Typically, you receive an email from a bank asking you to go to its site to reenter your most personal information. The link takes you to a bogus website!

For example, the Amazon.com.The website that the link leads to is a spoof; a fake website, not created by Amazon.com. It goes to http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/cfrwarning.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fcitdsl.fix.netvision.net.il/login.html, not Amazon.com! When you enter the information they ask for, you will simply be handing the thieves the keys to your bank accounts. That is how spoofing and phishing works.

Remember, no reputable business would send you an email requesting your personal account information. Any such email you receive asking for this information should be considered phony and brought to the attention of the business being 'phished'.

How You Can Prevent Phishing Scams

Let’s all work together to prevent phishing scams. If you receive a suspicious email, report it. You can send it to the US Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov or you can just click the “Report as Junk” (or similar) button on your email program.

A review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog

With a review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog, found that there are new spamming tactics around the virtual environment. Spamming is the flooding of electronic mail systems with “junk e-mail”. Also known as unsolicited bulk messages sent through the electronic messaging systems.

Widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam. Others types of spam are instant messaging spam, newsgroup spam, search engine spam, spam in blog and mobile phone messaging spam.Anti-spam software helps to reduce the influx of the unsolicited e-mails tremendously. This is evidenced in the Web-based e-mails services providers such as Yahoo, Google and Hotmail, where spam mails are easily filter out the spam folders.Recently, the spammers are coming out with new tactics to outsmart this anti-spam software. These new tactics are PDF Spam, Piggyback Spam and Greeting Card Spam.

PDF Spam is that an E-mail message containing only a subject line and a PDF file attached. The receiver of the PDF spam will be curious to know the content of the PDF file attached that they will open it and read. Spammers are using PDF spam because most spam filters are unable to screen the contents of a PDF attachment. If you come across any e-mail message that has a PDF file attached but no text in the message area, just delete it.

Piggyback Spam. Highly graphical e-mail messages that look like they come from large retailers. They will ask you to click on a link if you cannot ‘view’ the message properly. Another tactic used is to include a few links in the message that will allow you to ask the company to stop sending you mail, register for access to some site or contact customer services. The links may actually lead to a downloaded file which in turn may install malware or spyware. These files may also send out spam from your computer. If you receive any e-mail from a retailer you’ve never heard or agreed to receive email from, just delete it immediately.

Lastly, Greeting Card Spam. E-mail messages devised to look like greeting cards. However, it may contain dangerous virus. In the traditional e-greeting card systems, recipient would have to click on the link to view the full-blown greeting card online. The same concept is being applied in this spam. If you click on the link in a spammer’s e-card, it is most likely you are downloading a virus. To solve this problem, similarly as the above, we should delete any e-card received from unknown person.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data.

The Internet is not a safe place. Data is sent back and forth through various servers through which personal and information and financial data are housed. The problem with data transfer is the ability to intercept and record that data that is moving from server a to server b. Hackers have the ability to intercept and use that information, such as credit card numbers and expiry dates, to falsely do transactions.

Most of the website has provided the privacy and security to user, such as: Secure Socket Layer (SSL), require password customization, monitor industry standards and etc. Although, data stolen cases are still increasing in our society nowadays.

How we avoid the theft from website? We should take some activities to increase the internet security and decrease the data stolen probability. There are some suggestions stated in below:

1. Review your transaction confirmations and quarterly statements as soon as you receive and notify to the website immediately of any unauthorized activity.

2.Create passwords and PINs that would be hard for others to guess. Use a combination of numbers and letters if possible.

3.Avoid clicking on pop-up ads or downloading information from unknown sites.

4.Use your own computer, instead of a work or public machine, to access financial and other sensitive personal information.

5.Protect your Social Security number. Store your card in a safe place and avoid giving the number to others.

6.Shred, rather than toss, documents — including credit card offers, bank statements and junk mail.

7.Review your credit report regularly for inaccuracies.

8.Log out using dedicated links — rather than simply closing the account window — when conducting transactions or updating information online.

9.Avoid giving your personal information to “cold callers” and other unknown parties online, via e-mail and over the phone.

10Resist using free wireless connections — particularly in cafes, airports and other public places — to check personal information.

11.Use and update antivirus and antispyware software

E-commerce help us in reduce cycle time,improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

Cycle Time is the amount of time between a customer placing and order and receiving the goods. With e-commerce, customers only need to search what he wants, to enter his billing information and to sign up for an e-mail confirmation himself. It can reduce the cycle time as the organization does not have to do customer service representatives. Besides, it can reduce unnecessary phone calls and mailings. Organization also can make an order anytime through e-commerce. So that, organization will not face the problem of shortage of raw material if without made an order at the working time. Moreover, process through e-commerce can sell directly to customer and reduce the time through the middleman. Internet is available for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in 365 days. It provides customers a way to shop in their own time without salespeople. Reducing cycle times can: increase competitive advantage, decrease carrying costs, decrease shrinkage costs, and improve cash flow.

Employees' empowerment is a strategy for productivity improvement program nowadays. Employees' empowerment may also be apart of e-commerce. Empowered salespeople customer service employees are given the authority to make customer satisfy, do it quickly, and helping to increase customer loyalty. E-commerce allows the decentralization of decision making and authority via empowerment and distribution system.

E-commerce brings more convenience to customer and facilitates customer support. Example: e-commerce allows customer make payment via bank-in, credit card and bank cheque. It also allow customer to shop or perform other transaction year around, anytime, anywhere. Customer can select from many vendors and from many products, let customer can conduct quick comparison.

Otherwise, customer can locate relevant and detailed product information in second. It also can participate in virtual auctions, allow sellers to sell things quickly. Some products have facilitated customization and personalization of products and services. So, e-commerce provided many facilitate and increase customer support.

eBay success and its causes

Meg Whitman,President and chief executive officer, eBay.Begun in 1995, eBay was the brainchild of Pierre Omidyar, a computer programmer from San Jose, California. Omidyar launched the site as a means for his girlfriend, who collected Pez candy dispensers, to contact other collectors to buy, sell, and trade. The premise was simple: for a $3 fee paid to eBay, then called Auction Web, a seller could list an item for auction. Potential buyers could then bid on the item, with the highest bidder winning the auction. Omidyar's idea proved so successful that soon people were listing items other than Pez dispensers. The site also fostered a strong sense of community among those who participated. To prevent scams and fraud, Omidyar instituted message boards where buyers and sellers could rate each other. By 1997 the site was attracting more shoppers than any other site on the Web. The company began charging a 6 percent commission on all items listed and by 1998 had grown to 20 employees.

The company became too big for Omidyar to handle by himself. In March 1998, eBay approached to Whitman. For remaking a company, one of Whitman's first tasks was to make the eBay site more professional and more profitable. One of her first personnel moves was to hire Brian Swette, head of marketing at Pepsi, to take charge of eBay's marketing division. She redid the Web-site graphics, making the designs brighter and separating firearm and pornography offerings into age-restricted areas. (eBay has since discontinued the sale of firearms along with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and human organs.) In 1999 Whitman negotiated the purchase of Butterfield & Butterfield, a 134-year-old auction house in San Francisco that ranked a distant third behind more notable houses Sotheby's and Christies. With the purchase of Butterfield & Butterfield, eBay moved into the business of auctioning fine art and expensive collectibles. Still, Whitman's changes threatened to alienate smaller buyers and sellers who had played such an important role in building eBay.

While trying to court the small buyers and sellers, Whitman also pushed to expand the company's boundaries. She persuaded stores to sell on eBay, and began to offer specialty items under the eBay umbrella, a strategy she had developed at FTD. On September 24, 1998, eBay went public, with the initial public offering selling at $18 a share. By day's end, eBay stock closed at $47, an increase of 163 percent. Whitman was a millionaire. The initial public offering also thrust her into the limelight as the CEO of one the fastest-growing Internet companies in the world.

To help eBay move into other markets, Whitman also negotiated the purchase of Kruse International, a collectible car house, and Alando de AG, the largest online-auction house in Europe. By the end of the third quarter 1999, eBay reported sales of more than $741 million, up from just $195 million the year before. The company had also virtually cornered the online-auction business, accounting for 90 percent of all on-line-auction sales. Even though its earnings fell short of projections, the company managed to accomplish what many other high-profile Internet companies such as amazon.com could not: eBay made a profit.

Whitman credited much of eBay's success to its basic business model, which combined the elements of yard sales, newspaper classified ads, and auctions. This approach appealed to a wide spectrum of customers, from those who list yard-sale finds to large companies such as movie studios that auction off memorabilia to dealers who specialize in items from books to electronics and office equipment to collectibles and antiques. Whitman perfected the model: the company's role was simply to bring buyers and sellers together and to facilitate commerce. eBay carries no inventory nor does it ship items. The success of the site rests solely with its users. Though by auction-house standards the fees that eBay charges are low, often amounting to as little as 6 percent on each sale, almost all the monies generated are pure profit. As Whitman has pointed out, the eBay model works perfectly for Internet commerce geared as it is to high volume and low overhead. Although the business model has proven to be a gold mine, many analysts are quick to point out that eBay would likely not have succeeded had it not been for Whitman's efforts and expertise. For Whitman, the Internet and e-commerce was the wave to the future, and she continued to work to ensure that eBay would serve its customers and remain a major force in the global marketplace.

Sources for Further Information "CBS MarketWatch Names eBay's Meg Whitman as its First CEO of the Year," Business Wire, September 18, 2003, p. 56.

B2B failure and its causes

B2B e-commerce forces a company to become efficient and to provide value; if they don't, their failure will be swift. The new business paradigm that has resulted from B2B e-commerce technology has a tendency to weed out low-value players quickly, simply because the technology has created a more level, and infinitely larger playing field.

www.e-Toy.com is an example of e-commerce failure in year1997 – 2001. There are few causes toward their failure. First, failure to innovate. Innovation can be revolutionary or evolutionary. The need to innovate on the Internet is critical to success - especially the need to reduce human involvement in business processes. However, e-Toy.com did not make any develop on the innovation aspect, so that they failure in the B2B e-commerce in 1997-2001.

Besides that, they failure to adjust the compensation plan. The compensation plans as they are currently constituted in most businesses work against Internet success. As soon as any salesperson has even the threat of loss of income due to e-commerce, the politics will kick in and Internet advancement will stall.

Moreover e-Toy.com also failure to execute the Internet as a strategy. Today most marketers are looking at the Internet as a communications medium, which it is. They are not, however, seeing that it can facilitate an entirely new business model, a new strategy. Instead of using the Web to deliver leads to sales people, let the lead advance the relationship without a salesperson - a new strategy facilitated by the medium.

The most important cause is the e-Toy.com failure to budget. Companies are still carving Internet budget from other areas without providing adequate resources (the corporate word for cash and what it will buy) for supporting and advancing the Internet. It cannot be a static budget. As savings are realized and revenues generated, the Internet must have additional funding from these successes or it will fall behind waiting for the next budget cycle. Due to e-Toy.com did not have any flexible budget for the following budget, so they are failure in e-commerce industry.

History and evolution of E-commerce

History of E-commerce dates back to very old notion of “sell and buy”. E-commerce has begun before personal computers were so normal and has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Amazon.com and eBay.com is the biggest companies which allow electronic transaction that make the history of E-commerce thinkable. Currently, there are five largest and the most famous worldwide internet retailers which are Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. By year 1984, the electronic data interchange (EDI) was standardized through ASCX12. With reliably, the companies would be able to complete a transaction. By year 1992, the compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This has give people the first chance to buy things through their computers. In year 1994, the netscape have arrived which providing users a simple browser to surf the internet and a safe online transaction technology which called Secure Sockets Layers. By the year of 1995, there have two biggest names in E-commerce are launched which are Amazon.com and eBay.com. In year 1999, the retail spending over the Internet was reaches to $ 20 billion which according to Business.com. By the year of 2000, the U.S. government extended the moratorium on the Internet taxes until at least year 2005. In year 2007, Fortune magazine have ranked Dell as the 34th largest company in the Fortune 500 list and 8th on its annual Top 20 list of the most successful and admired companies in the USA in recognition of the company’s business model.

Fei Soon's Self-Introduction

Hi!all guy,my name is Ng Fei Soon, u can call me janice.I am 21 year old,my birthday in April 5.My hometown is in Cameron Highlands,but now i am stay at ampang ,Kuala Lumpur.I am still a student ,i study accounting course in University Tunku Abdul Rahman since 2 years ago.I am year 3 semenster 1 now.

I am a talkative,active,and funny person.I like shopping,cooking and baking.i also love travelling,i ever went to Puala Pinang,Langkawi,Genting Higlands,Port Dickson,Johor Baru,Melaka,Ipoh,Kuatan with my friends.

I spent most time in internet.Thr most frequence website i visited are http://www.friendster.com,www.google.com,www.tom365.com,www.cinemaonline.com/, and http://www.ahmeng.net/

I use friensters to keep conduct with my all friend among the world.i oso can view the lastest photo posted by my friends.The google help my find information and answer in my life.Tom365 is a free movie download website,i can download all the interested movie from this website.when in weekends,my friends date me watch the lastest movie in cimema,i will check the time,seat and reserve the ticket in the website of cinema online.The website of ah meng,actually is a forum.i can post my feeling ,dairy,and interest things into this website.

My e-mail address is mailto:n_xun045@hotmail.com.%20f u want to be my friend,welcome to add me .

Sze Yieng's Self-Introduction

I'm Sze Yieng which from Kuala Lumpur and my staying place is located at Jalan Ipoh area. I stay with my grandmother since I was born. I have a healthy and happy family member which are parent and my four siblings. I'm 21 years old and my horoscope is leo. Now I studies accounting course at UTAR Sungai Long. The course takes three years long to graduate and now i already in year 3 semester 1. My hobbies are shopping, eating, travelling and watch drama. The shopping mall that i always go is One Utama which located at Damansara Utama and Pavillion which located at Bukit Bintang. Recently I went to Pulau Redang, Terengganu on my semester break. The place really nice as specially the Marin Park. The sea really have many types of fish and the beach is nice to go. This place are nice to relax yourselves and release stress. The most website that i visit is http://www.friendster.com/ This is the website's activities is making friend from whole world. So in this website, I can make more friend which from different location and country. The second website that i always visit is http://www.hotmail.com/ which I used to check my mail every day. Others than this, I also visit http://www.mail.yahoo.com/ to check my mail. I have different account between hotmail and yahoo. Others than that, i used to visit http://www.youtube.com/ which is the place that can let people share the video that they like. I visit this website to look around the updated video and also artist music video. I also visit http://www.tom365.com/ which consist of varities of drama and movies. I find and watch the interested movie and drama from this website.

Ming's Self-Introduction

Hello, my name is Tiang Zhang Ming. I come from Johor Bahru. I stay in Sungai Long Evergreen Park now. My hobbies is playing computer games and singing. Besides that, i also like to play badminton. When i am free i will play computer games and listening music. I have 3 sister which all younger than me. My favourite food is sushi. For my ambition, i want to be a accountant. The top 5 website which I visited the most is http://www.gougou.com/. The website help me finds the song which i want to find. Second website is http://www.hotmail.com/ which I need to check my mail. Third is http://www.baidu.com/ which help me find some information on it. Forth is http://www.google.com/ which also help me search the information. Fifth website is http://www.getdota.com/ which help me find the lastest Dota map for my games...Recently I also found 1 website which can singing online and hear people singing which is http://www.meetoto.com/. The website is very fantastic! I also like to know more people. For more about my information, you all can add my msn and friendster address: gundam_2006@hotmail.com to chat with me^^

San's Self-Introduction

Hi,my name is Pooi San, can called me San San. I come from Cheras, KL. Im taking Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) Accounting in UTAR. Im year 3 semester 1 student. My hobbies are shopping and sleeping. I wish to marry a smart and rich man,so that he can give me a lot of money to go to shopping,hehe...... I seldom visit internet because my house cannot online. Although i seldom visit internet, i still have top 5 websites i always visit it. There are http://www.msn.com/, http://www.yahoo.com/, http://www.ppstream.com/, http://www.friendster.com/, and http://www.tom365.com/. I always add my net friends on msn.com and friendster.com. When i feel boring, i will go to msn.com chatting with my friends. I use the Yahoo.com to seach my assignment information. I like this website because it can help me find many information that i needed. Besides that, i also always go to ppstream.com and tom365.com to download all interested movie that i like to watch. I also will play some games on internet.