Electronic Payment Schemes

Now, let’s start rolling the e- related stuff!

The twenty-first century way to pay is by electronic or digital cash (or one can say virtual cash also), which allows consumers to pay for goods/ services by transmitting a number from one computer to another. These numbers function much like the serial numbers on "real money”, they are unique and represent a specific amount of actual cash.

Unlike credit-card transactions, electronic-cash transactions are anonymous. E-cash works just like paper cash. Once it is withdrawn from an account it does not leave a trail of digital crumbs. E-cash by its nature is portable and therefore more convenient for mobile commerce (Internet-capable cell phones and personal digital assistants).

Couple of well known players in industry on this domain:

Pay Pal - A U.S.-based system that allows individuals in the United States to send money to each other via email.

First-E - A European, Internet-only bank.

Mondex - Electronic cash that is made available via "smart card."

eCash (formerly DigiCash) - One of the early developers of electronic payment systems

There is variety of options for electronic payments; usual ones include use of credit, debit and charge cards. In order to accept any of aforesaid cards, e business, must have a merchant account, payment-processing software and procedure to protect its customers and itself (most importantJ) against any type of fraud, phishing, hacking related activities.

Electronic cash

    Electronic cash and payment schemes-Internet monetary and payment schemes,  Payment and Purchase order process, on line  electronic cash

Now its time to know more about  E-Payments.

 Basics

Before jumping to e-com related jargons, let’s spend a while on basics on banking /payment systems.

Banking originated in ancient era, where royal palaces, temples were used as secure place for safekeeping of grain and other commodities. Receipts for stored commodities were used for transfers not only to the original depositors but also to third parties, including tax gatherers and traders.

Bank notes were introduced during 1694 by Bank of England as central banking system
On following steps during 1775 continental congress issued paper money to finance revolutionary war. Thereafter in 1800s and early 1900 saw issuance of state bank notes, gold certificates. And finally in 1913 Federal Reserve act was created to further structure roadmap.

Cheque: Its written order on a bank or other financial institution to pay money belonging to the owner of cheque to cheque presenter. Personal cheque is drawn on individual bank account, while cashier cheque is drawn on financial institution.

Money Order: It is an order for the payment of a specified amount of money, usually issued and payable at a bank or post office. It’s feasible for people who don’t have back account or circumstances where cheques are not accepted in payments.

Credit Card: It is a valuable piece of plastic J, i.e. plastic card used instead of cash or cheques to pay for buying goods/services. Credit card companies send monthly statement of charges made by credit card. Users can make full payment or partial payment, later one comes with interest/finance charges attached to same.

Debit Card: It’s also plastic used to procure good/services, but it’s important to note it’s linked to bank account. Bank deducts transactions made directly from account. It good workaround for people, who for contend (i.e. not to fell in trap of credit card companies)

And want to avoid carrying actual cash with them.

Before you learn more about electronic payments you need to  get an idea about online transaction. Check out the various events that lead to an Online Transaction.

1. Online Shopping: The user short list an item to procure on the net.

2. Starting the Transaction Once you feed shipping and credit card information, the user is presented with summary which includes items, price, billing information, delivery schedule, terms n conditions (if any). The payment process is secured with industrial strength encryption and forwarded with the order form to the merchant's CyberCash CashRegister.

3. CashRegister Picks up Merchant Information

• The merchant's identification information is automatically added to the encrypted payment request.

4. Path from CyberCash Firewall till the Bank

• Remains encrypted, payment request is forwarded over the Internet cloud and is received via a secure firewall by CyberCash CashRegister server.


• CyberCash swift passes payment request to the merchant's financial institution, which float it across to consumer's credit card bank to approve or decline payment authorization.

5. Credit Card Bank / Institution Sends Approval

• Users credit card bank revert its response through the merchant's financial institution to the merchant's CashRegister.


• The shopper also receives confirmation of credit card approval.


• The entire authorization process takes under 20 seconds.(Courtesy technology J )

6. Transaction is Completed and Captured

• The merchant delivers the items to the shopper.


• The merchant requests financial settlement, of the transaction through the CashRegister server.

Funds are transferred to the merchant's account by its financial institution

Factors affecting growth of E-commerce

a.  Security

Without iota of thought it’s on mind of everyone who even thinks to do business online. Today hackers have become so personal, that it takes minutes to conquer / take over website having loop holes. Firewall, IDS, encryptions, digital signatures all have same endeavor to provide secure and peaceful life over internet cloud!

b. Scalability

It relates to your capability to run show, no matter what how large business gets. Usually new players/ freshers to e-commerce community don’t have strong vision. Most silly mistake players do, they under-estimate growth rate, never forget your playground is spread across globe. From day one, you should keep your seats belts tighten. One example in past, where we saw failure was “alladvantage.com” They failed to anticipate the network effect, and the company found its business model did not scale with unanticipated customer growth. They added one million customers within three months of launch; their revenue model was based on selling demographic date to advertisers.

c. Perceived Risk with Product/Service

If there are thousands of e-commerce savvy personnel’s, lets not forget there are millions of others, who don’t agree too much with concept due to risk with final product/service they will get after buying online. Different people, different perception some are scared with fraud, some worried about delivery schedules, some say there is no meaning of warranty when you buy goods online !

Tips and Tricks to organize manager’s work place

Managerial tasks are the tasks that require vigilance,alertness but at the same time need to be done in a cool easy going manner. Three basic task of a manager are managing people,managing processes,managing information. Here are some tips and tricks to organize manager’s workplace in order to increase his efficency in office.

1. Check the placement of your computer screen on your desk
   
   
   • At your workplace there should be no overhead lighting that will glare on a 12° tilt back screen.
   
   
   • You should not have window and a screen at the same time in your field of vision
   
   
   • You need to have check on height of the monitor. The top level of your monitor should be placed at your natural gaze level
   
   


2. Avoid noises in offices
   
   • The ideal level of noise is as low as 50 dB in managers’ offices
   
   
   • Human voices may interfere with your intelligence
   
   The human voice is a priority source of information that the brain cannot help but process. Our focus strongly prioritizes the perception of human voices and faces. Our concentration in a noisy office may, prompted by safety concerns, choose to focus on the human voices surrounding us, even though we may be trying to concentrate on a difficult file.



3. Organize your desk


4. Organize your work space by task, by activity, by objective
   
   • Hang a whiteboard in front of you and write on it what's important.
   
   
   • Close your door if you have important work. Don't be interrupted.
   
   
   • You can put a photography of your family if it's a stable couple.
   
   


5. No human face in your visual field.Human faces may interfere with your intelligence


6. Work on a clear desk 
   You will find it much harder to concentrate if you are studying a document on a desk full of papers and files than if you perform the same task on a clear desk.


7. Respect the proximity rule
   Frequently used objects must be placed closer to you.Office audits show that this rule is seldom applied


8. Hang a head-up display in front of your desk
   
   • Objectives out of sight, objectives out of mind
   
   
   • Buy a whiteboard, note down your personal objectives on it and hang the board just in front of your desk.
   
   This is a habit of many professionals who thus manage to concentrate on the essentials. Each time they lift their head from their desktop, they know what purpose the day should serve. If the same information were written on a computer screen or a piece of paper, it would be less effective.

Source: Management Organization by Patrick M. Georges

Thank God I use Gmail at my workplace

In office when you get hundreds of mails and you need to read,mark and categorize them as per official need. You may need to customize mail for the client and need to store a lot of e-mail IDs. Things may get messed up if your e-mail service is not . In most office there is an official e-mail software used in case you don't have one what you need to use.

Work Around

- Use Gmai Account for managing your e-mails.

Some of the popular features of Gmail are listed below:

Labeling E-Mails Gmail provides facility to label e-mails. These methods provide user facility for categorizing e-mails by labeling them. An e-mail can be labeled any number of times. User can display e-mails with a particular label and can also use it as a criterion for searching e-mails.Managing Contacts As you send e-mail via Gmail contact list of gmail gets updated. It also has auto-completion feature that pop ups e-mail ID, primary name as user writes address in the To,Cc,Bcc column. Auto Save feature Gmail is equipped with auto save feature that saves the current e-mail as draft in case the window gets close accidentally due to browser error or any other issue. G-Mail Notifier G-Mail is an Official Tool provided by Google for getting new mail notifications. The notification icon is installed in the task bar in PC and on right hand side of Menu bar in MAC OS and it signals whenever there is new mail in the Inbox. G-Mail Chat feature With G-Mail chat you can chat with other people who have g-mail account. It can also be synchronized with Google talk network and thus enables interaction with google talk clients. Key board short cuts Gmail provides keyboard shortcuts that can be used while browsing g-mail. These short cuts are enabled by default and need to be enabled by the user Support to Multiple languages Gmail provides support to about 40 languages. All web pages and e-mails are encoded in the Unicode standard (UTF-8). This enables sending and receiving e-mails containing Cyrillic, Asian and Latin special characters. G-Mail’s RSS feed feature G-Mail has RSS feed feature that enables feed as single line on top of the page. User can scroll the feed to read through the content. Anti-Virus Scanning Gmail introduced a feature which automatically scans all incoming and outgoing e-mail attachments for viruses. If a virus is found on an attachment the reader is trying to open, Gmail will try to remove the virus and open the newly cleaned attachment. Provides access to Google Docs & Spreadsheets Google Docs & Spreadsheets can be used to view word processor documents and spreadsheets. It is a free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program. It accepts popular file formats such as DOC, XLS, ODF, ODS, RTF, CSV, etc. You can share a document with another user and invite the user by email address. Invited visitors can sign and access the document for viewing or editing. Document can also be shared among multiple people. It has provision of a screen chat window that provide updated information which user changed which document and when.

Join Anti-Phishing Work Group

Phishing is one of the popular crime I discussed in some previous posts. TO fight phishing you need to know various methods that can lead to phishing. Phishing can be done via Social Engineering or via technical subterfuge.

Social-engineering schemes use 'spoofed' e-mails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers often convince recipients to respond.

Technical subterfuge schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials directly, often using Trojan keylogger spyware. Pharming crimeware misdirects users to fraudulent sites or proxy servers, typically through DNS hijacking or poisoning.

A new kind of phishing scam has been discovered where phisher uses voice recordings to pilfer money from PayPal accounts. This is one of the latest social engineering attack where identity thieves have lured users into dialing a phone number and giving up credit card information. Phishing e-mails are sent to the peopple which do not ask for personal information but urges the recipient to call a phone number and verify account details.These phone numbers are em

Work Around

- Join Anti-Phishing Group



To fight such notorious crime we need to be part of anti-phishing process. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is the global pan-industrial and law enforcement association focused on eliminating the fraud and identity theft that result from phishing, pharming and email spoofing of all types. You can report phishing emails, pharming sites and crimeware to the Anti-Phishing Working Group and help stop this insidious threat to e-commerce. Some of the features of the group are:

1: Avaialbility of Phishing and Crimeware map.

Phishing and Crimeware map displays the most recent data collected by Websense Security Labs (WS Labs) and provides a historical look into where Phishing and Crimeware related websites are hosted on the Internet. Upon discovery, each site is looked up via its IP Address to track the country of origin through the appropriate IP registrars and plotted on the map

2: Report Phishing Crime

Anti-phishing work group is in process of building a repository of phishing scam emails and websites to help people identify and avoid being scammed in the future.

Source: http://www.antiphishing.org

Related Post: 

• Using Anti-Phishing Software



• Using Microsft outlook Anti-Phishing Features


• Fighting Spyware


• Fighting against e-mail spam

How to write a better Business letter?

Many times at work place you are stuck while writing a business letter. Your boss may be demanding a formal business letter. Business Letter,apology letter,sales letter , complain letter, resignation letter, thank you letter needs to be professional and impressive. Some times you may feel you need a letter writing expert for writing a strategic business letter. Such letter writing needs effective business letter cover plan. Business letter headings and closings needs to be appropriate. In short there are some business letter etiquette that needs to followed. You need to have a tool that helps you in writing a professional business letter without wasting much of your time and at low cost.

Work Around


- Use a Business Letter writing software

Business Letter Professional is a letter writing tool available for writing impressive, attractive letters.

Features
Business Letter Professional includes about 1000 typical business letter templates. It has an embedded text editor that allows you to edit, copy, paste, search, preview and save your letters. It also enables you to set an external e-mail program to send your finished letters directly.


Some basic tasks which can be accompolished using Business Letter professional are:

1. In accounting & Finance for raising capital, applying for grants, improving accounting methods etc



2. Marketing & Sales:Helps in planning market campaign, sending a press release and more.


3. Thanks & Greetings: Provides help for congratulating on success, expressing satisfaction with certain products or service, acceptance of suggestion or giving greeting on a special day.


4. Complain & Apology: complain about goods and bad service, eliminate misunderstandings, stop illegal use of properties, and explain mistakes on customer service.


5. Cooperate & Legal: protect your Intellectual Property, protect company secrets, better negotiate your office lease, and use By-laws, shareholders Agreement & Articles of Incorporation to setup your business.


6. Marketing & Sales: increase your sales with better communication, improve response time to customer inquiries, plan a marketing campaign, send a press release, and sign distribution/partnership deals.


7. Personnel & Employees: hire/fire employees, contractors and consultants, write detailed company policies and procedures, prepare professional job descriptions, conduct personnel evaluations, manage your workforce, and sign confidentiality agreements.


8. Proposal & Request: request and sign agreements reselling products, and expand your market reach with co-branding opportunities and affiliate marketing.

Source:getfreesofts