Business To Business Payment Intermediaries

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Coursework 1

E-Commerce Portfolios

Heriot-Watt University (Dubai Campus)

F21EC E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY 2011-2012 End navigation links

Prepared By:

Nisreen Al-Mzayyn

H00108216

List of Portfolios

Business-to-Business Payment intermediaries

e-Commerce Websites Backup

Data Clustering and its eCommerce Ties

Online Banking

Online Auction Sites

Electronic Wallet "e-Wallet"

e-Checks

e-Cash Subset of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)

Banner Ads

Business-to-Business Payment intermediaries

Nisreen Al Mzayyn

College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Herriot Watt University, Dubai

Abstract

Today electronic market, representing one of the most important trends of electronic commerce development, is making constant improvement on the diversification of market operating models, functional integration and innovation. As emerging market intermediaries, electronic market operators vary in type, business model, and exchange mechanism. On the other hand, they have common aspects in market efficiency, extent of adaptation to environment, and development prospect since they were born to accommodate to local market environment.

Introduction

The revolution in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) changed the way people conduct business. Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce is the type of trade conducted between businesses over the internet. The market of such a business is a platform on which B2B e-commerce may conduct directly between buyer and seller or through a third party. [1]

The intermediaries are facilitators of online trades between buyers and sellers who are businesses. In economic literature, an intermediary (also known as middleman or broker) is a firm between the suppliers (producers) and buyers which selling products in their own right. However, that was the narrow view of intermediary. The broader view is involving anyone along the entire value chain from raw inputs to final consumption. [2] [3][4]

Electronic Market Operator: Type, Role and Business Model

Intermediaries Classification

The following is the classification of the intermediaries based on the basic types of B2B Transactions and Activities:[5][6]

Sell-side: intermediaries are of the type of one-to-many private e-marketplaces and responsible for inviting many buyers who will be buying from the single seller.

Buy-side: intermediaries are of the type of one-to-many private e-marketplaces and responsible for inviting many sellers who will sell to the single buyer.

Exchanges: many-to-many e-marketplaces, usually owned and run by a third party or intermediary, in which many buyers and many sellers meet electronically to trade with each other.

Supply chain improvements and collaborative commerce: these intermediaries are identifying new market opportunities, helping member companies identify core competencies, and providing project management services.

Intermediaries Efficient Role

The term intermediate refers to a position: being or occurring at the middle place, stage, or degree or between extremes. Intermediaries bring together customers and suppliers in-order to facilitates demand and supply activities for the exchange of goods, services and information. An intermediary provides value-added services such as products’ aggregation, distribution, information, and quality checks warranties[2].

Web intermediaries’ services categorized in four basic categories: aggregation of buyers and sellers, trust enhancement among participants, market facilitation, and matching of buyers and sellers[7].

Moreover, intermediaries solve customers’ problems and, as a result, suppliers problems. Intermediaries can solve problems of demand and supply because of their special position in the business network, including but not limited to the following[2][7]:

Connecting many customers with many suppliers. Therefore the intermediary can provide services and gain efficiencies via the reduction of necessary contacts between customers and suppliers.

Specialise in exchange activities and supportive production functions.

Acting as a neutral party, a buffer between the interests of customers and suppliers.

Given that intermediaries can be seen in a broader view leads to the fact that they can perform one or more of the following broader functions[2]:

Transforming products (manufacturing, assembling, bundling, packaging)

Being physically closer to the final buyer than the producer.

Smoothing the market by carrying inventory

Providing expert actions or information

Being long-term players with good reputations (for quality assurance)

Economising on search costs for consumers

Matching buyers and sellers (in willingness to pay as well as what is bought and sold)

Economising on costs of completing and implementing the transaction

The business model of e-market operators

Electronic market operators are defined only in a basic marketing positioning sense. Their business models diversify broadly. And as development unfolds, these models frequently make functional shift and integration to improve market efficiency, objectively achieving an advanced form of functional model. There exists more than one method of categorizing electronic commerce models. currently eleven models are available include online store, online purchase, online shopping mall, online auction, electronic community, coordination platform, third-party market, value chain integrator, value chain service supplier, information provider, credit intermediary service and other services. The system takes into account how much business models offer in innovation and the ability to integrate functions. As far as specific business models of electronic market are concerned, there are online bazaar[8], online exchange centre[9], Internet distributing and browsing centre, online auction site and electronic automatic exchange[10]. In turn, each of them is in a higher stage than the previous one. Accordingly, the corresponding exchange mechanism of each stage appears increasingly complicated and advanced.[11]

B2B Electronic Market: Efficiency Measurement, Advantages, and Trust Building

B2B e-Commerce: Sources of Efficiency

B2B e-commerce achieves efficiencies through several key mechanisms, as well as others including process efficiencies, web efficiencies, demand/forward aggregation, value added services "that what companies should buy?, when they should buy and where?, from whom and at which price?", information sharing and aggregation, price discovery mechanisms and risk management.[1]

Trust Building For e-marketplaces Intermediary

B2B e-marketplaces did not boom as expected. That the adoption rate of B2B e-marketplaces is low and most B2B marketplaces have liquidity problems. Actually many aspects are playing role, such as the lack of acceptance by people, or unaffordable implementation costs. It is noticeable that the issue of trust contributes to the low acceptance of B2B e-Marketplaces.

The is some Trust Building Frameworks suggested and the one suggested by Shan Wang[12] is of the best. It suggested four elements in the B2B e-marketplaces: suppliers, buyers, intermediaries (e-Marketplaces operators) and the systems that the e-Marketplaces operators maintain, including website and backend systems. For an EM intermediary, three types of trust need to be considered:[12]

Trust between e-Marketplaces and its participants; which described as a one-way trust that is "the trust of participants on e-Marketplaces". There are four characteristics of e-Marketplaces operators foster online trust operators:

Brand Name: practically most B2B e-marketplaces are start-ups.

Industry Expertise: Good industry expertise helps an e- marketplace to improve its quality of services, which convey a quality and professional EM image to participants.

Neutrality in Ownership: where no favour for one side to the other, no profitability tends by using inside information.

Privacy Policy: B2B transactions are high transaction value, and highly confidential business information.

The trust between its systems and participants. The failure of transaction is unaffordable for businesses. If e-Marketplaces' systems are low in interoperability, participants' investment in e-Marketplace will be hesitated to adopt. So improving the systems readability and dependability, enhancing the security of the system and providing training and customer training are aspects enhancing Ems trust.

The trust between suppliers and buyers. Convenience of purchase is very important. The purchase can be anonymous and one time based. In this case, inter-organizational trust is low. Furthermore the reputation as an incentive mechanism to build trust is difficult since most transactions are one time based.

Advantages of B2B e-Intermediaries and e-marketplaces

There is a bundle of value-adding advantages of e-marketplaces over traditional market such as construct new market, increase market transparency, improve the rate of successful transaction, cut cost and facilitate exchange. Cost reduction is the most important advantage in the world of commerce, that the problems facing any e-business in many respects are similar to those facing all exchange: search costs, the costs of co-ordinating the activities of different agents along the value chain and the costs of combating opportunistic behaviour. Typically there are two types of transaction costs: one for all those cost involved in co-ordination, the other concerned of "motivation related" costs, which e-intermediaries succeeded to reduce these transaction costs. [11][10][11]

Conclusion

The phenomenon of e-business is still quite new also to academics and researchers; it is clearly a fertile field for research. Economists, marketers, operations researchers, computer scientists, engineers of every kind, and many other categories of scientists investigate the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in business, develop improved information systems and techniques, and propose new business methodologies and frameworks. In other words, they are looking for the "optimum" in e-commerce.[3]

The enormous growth predictions for business-to-business electronic commerce must confront the realities of reorganizing industry. It is evident that advances in computers and communications hold great promise for reducing transaction costs between businesses. Moreover, some of the many innovative proposals for market reorganization by intermediaries and market makers should help to reduce the costs of search, contracting, and monitoring performance in market for inputs. However, it will take time to implement the significant changes in the merchant functions of firms that are needed to realize these cost savings. Moreover, some of these savings are to be achieved not simply by changing market transactions but by changing the make-or-buy decisions of companies. As a result, the benefits of lower transaction costs might not be achieved without significant changes in the manufacturing activities of companies through outsourcing and expansion of external suppliers. Finally, allocating intercompany transactions through electronic intermediaries will require improved infrastructure for transportation and logistical coordination.[15][2] [10]

Bibliography

[1] R. Akella, V. F. Araman, and S. Unversity, "B2B MARKETS : PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLIER RISK MANAGEMENT IN E-BUSINESS," Supply Chain Management: Models, Applications, and Research Directions, vol. 62, pp. 33-66, 2006.

[2] E. Fielt, DESIGNING FOR ACCEPTANCE Designing for Acceptance. Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands, 2006.

[3] M. Kourgiantakis and E. Petrakis, "Modelling B2B E-Marketplaces : The Role of Intermediaries," Greece, 2007.

[4] S. Picant, F. Bourge, and A.-I. Mouaddib, "A Representation of B2B Interacting Actions," in 2010 Fifth International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services, 2010, pp. 451-456.

[5] "The Role Of Intermediaries In B2b," Article Dashboard, 2011. .

[6] P. M. Efraim Turban , Jae Kyu Lee , Dave KIng, Judy McKay, Electronic Commerce 2008 (Electronic Commerce), 1st ed. Prentice Hall, 2007.

[7] J. P. B. Y. Bakos, "An exploratory study of the emerging role of electronic role of electronic intermediary," International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 1997.

[8] A. M. Ansely Post, Vijit Shah, "Bazaar: strengthening user reputations in online marketplaces," in NSDI’11 Proceedings of the 8th USENIX conference on Networked systems design and implementation, 2011.

[9] W. Xing, Q. Zhao, and H. Meng, "Choice of Channel Structures in the Presence of B2B Online Exchange," in 2009 International Symposium on Information Engineering and Electronic Commerce, 2009, pp. 245-248.

[10] G. S. Wolfgang Jank, Modeling Online Auctions (Statistics in Practice), 1st ed. WILEY, 2010.

[11] F. Yi, "Electronic Market and Operating Intermediary," in ICEC  ’05 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Electronic commerce, 2005, pp. 131-135.

[12] S. Wang, "Building Trust in Business-to-Business Electronic Marketplaces," no. 1. Beijing, pp. 700-705, 2008.

[13] J. Humphrey, "Business-to-business e-commerce and access to global markets: exclusive or inclusive outcomes?," 2002.

[14] S. Garicano, L., and Kaplan, "The Effects of Business-to-Business E-Commerce on Transaction Costs." Chicago, 2000.

[15] D. Lucking-reiley and D. F. Spulber, "Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce," Construction, no. 0. NASHVILLE, p. 29, 2000.

e-Commerce Websites Backup

Nisreen Al Mzayyn

College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Herriot Watt University, Dubai

Abstract

Backups could be compared to life insurance policies for Web operations, but actually they are something more. Quality backups are like a life insurance plan that would resurrect life if it passed away, rather than simply grant loved ones some monetary assistance.

Introduction

Enormous amounts of very valuable data are stored on e-business computers, but it known that computers tend to die from time to time. That’s why for every business that is using the Web as a revenue-generating channel, their data is a main company asset. The loss of a customer order database could be devastating to a business, leading to unfulfilled orders, dissatisfied valuable hardly gained customers and loss of touch with thousands of clients. Depending on one computer alone is a formula for disaster.[1] [2]

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

Some aspects of security measures can be improved with moderate expense. Other technical aspects need capital investment in software, hardware, infrastructure, and technical expertise. e-Businesses should seriously consider the security threats and issues. However, As backup is "an ounce of prevention" for e-Business, it could be manipulated in house by the IT person manually on regular bases , but however this seems to be the worst backup practice and the most dangerous as well.[3][2].

For a relatively low traffic site dose not have critical data to be collected, weekly backups may suffice. For sites collecting large amounts of orders and client information every day, daily backups are a minimum requirement. The very largest e-commerce sites have been known to take backups on an hourly basis, or even have their data constantly written to backup computers in a process known as replication, where some recovery algorithms are used in-order to identify redundancy in datasets and enhances the system’s performance by reducing the number of data really transferred and stored in the backup and recovery process.[1][4]

Avoiding Horror Stories

Best Practices

Backup to Recover

There is really one reason to perform backup; to recover. All other potential reasons to backup are secondary when it comes to needing to perform a recovery. As such this means that backup systems must be designed with recovery performance rather than the amount of time the backup will take. In environments with service level agreements (SLAs), the design of a backup environment should actually start with determining what the recovery SLAs are, and then working backwards to a backup system that can deliver such performance. Given that backups are done to recover, by implication it also means that there must be adequate testing, monitoring, and protection of backups performed.[5]

Protecting Data is more important

Distinguishing between Protecting e-Business System and e-Business Data is vital for backup party on charge while choosing the best backup solution for their business. Some solutions are better working for system files rather than data. It is commonly recommended to backup more than backup less. However, the decision of not backing up some files or data must be written by system owners or upper management since verbal agreements after all are not considered.[6][5]

Documentation

Necessarily, documentation should include disaster recovery procedures that cover activities beyond the computer-related steps to a recovery, contact details for the owners, key users, and administrators of the system. This is useful not only in recovery situations, but also for general administrative actions such as: Notification of failed backups, confirming that planned changes in the backup procedure will be acceptable and confirming whether to re-run failed backups.[3][5]

Results Checking and Reporting

 Backups are not performed to tick a few boxes on a daily report of duties undertaken, but to ensure the continuity of the business. As such, they need to be treated seriously and monitored properly, just like any other key system in an environment, that faults reports guides to track the failure including the date and time, the hosts associated, exact error message and much more. [5]

Administering Backups

The following are the backup administrators’ duties[1]:

Have written policy and procedures of how a restore from backup should be handled. Those are for cutting down confusion and allow the process to move along more smoothly.

Test restores from backup. Some complex applications might require special software agents or configurations to backup and restore properly. If restore testing process takes too long, backup strategy should be reconsidered.

Physically protect backup data from hackers and thieves. Holding an unencrypted backup is just as bad as breaking in.

Keep copies of software that may need to be re-installed along with your backups. This includes operating systems, software applications and security patches for either of those.

Backup Solution Design

Choosing the right backup plan for an e-Business should be done in consultation with experienced professionals who can help to design a solution that will allow restoring the site to full functionality in an acceptable time frame. While often overlooked in the price-conscious shopping process, backups are critical to the long-term success of any Web operation. [1]

Technologies used for backup solutions vary based on the operating system platform and the type of data that is being backed up. In a Windows environment, VERITAS software's BackupExec is a solution for those cannot afford any data loss. VERITAS produces special agents to work with many leading software applications to ensure data from those applications is backed up perfectly. In a UNIX environment, open source backup software such as BACULA suits for a high-quality, low-cost solution.[1]

Modern backup systems have four key components[3][5]:

Automation: the schedule, and tape management and inventory are the three aspects of backup procedure to be automated. Furthermore, bad automation automates many aspects of a task but does not alleviate the think work that must be done, is the only worse scenario of no automation.

Centralization: it is a fundamental cost effective design goal for modern backup that two major costs can be reduced through centralization; Tape changes are costly because of labour intensive, the equipment itself is costly, and the tolerance for error is low.

Inventory Management: Well-architected backup systems have excellent inventory systems. The system must have an excellent file inventory so that restores are done quickly and an excellent tape inventory so that tapes are recycled according to schedule.

Understandings: everyone within the backup environment both administrators and data owners must ensure that they are understand that back, as another form of insurance.

Conclusion

High availability and data consistency are essential for enterprise applications, particularly for e-Commerce. Such enterprise applications must be continuously available to their clients, and should strive to ensure exactly once invocation semantics. Providing high availability and data consistency involves careful design and programming of the applications, replication of critical components (namely, the transaction coordinator and stateful application objects of the middle-tier servers), and replication of the backend database systems.[7][3][2]

Bibliography

[1] C. Kivlehan, "Backing Up Your Web Site Data: An Overlooked Necessity," Times, E-Commerce. [Online]. Available: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/52670.html. [Accessed: 05-Mar-2012].

[2] J. M. Kizza, A Guide to Computer Netwoork Security. Springer, 2009.

[3] S. C. Thomas A.Limoncelli, Christina Hogan, The Practice of System and Network Administration, 2nd ed. Addison-Wesley, 2007.

[4] D. Wang, L. Wang, and J. Song, "SEDBRS: A Secure and Efficient Desktop Backup and Recovery System," in The First International Symposium on Data, Privacy, and E-Commerce (ISDPE 2007), 2007, pp. 304-309.

[5] P. de Guise, "Backup and Recovery Best Practices," IT Performance Improvement, 2010. [Online]. Available: http://www.ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/Articles/2011-07deGuise.html. [Accessed: 06-Mar-2012].

[6] R. P. Lipschutz, "Backup Best Practices: Read This First," PC Magazine, 2005. [Online]. Available: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1847364,00.asp. [Accessed: 06-Mar-2012].

[7] M. Khosrow-pour, Encyclopedia of E-Commerce, E-Government and Mobile Commerce. IDEA GROUP REFEENCE, 2006.

Data Clustering and its eCommerce Ties

Nisreen Al Mzayyn

College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Herriot Watt University, Dubai

Introduction

The core of clustering is to classify a group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together. Clustering is a technology for customising operating systems, compilers and applications as well as, hardware connections between servers in the cluster. In computing field clustering has two perspectives[1][2]:

Soft : it is for clustering data and OSs, it is also known as Data Clustering.

Hard : it is for clustering computer and network components.

This report concerns of Data Clustering aspects and algorithms.

Data Clustering (Clustering Analysis) Closer Look

Cluster analysis organises data by abstracting underlying structure either as a grouping of individuals or as a hierarchy of groups. The representation can then be investigated to see if the data group according to preconceived ideas or to suggest new experiments.[3]

Due to the rapid growth of the internet in the past decade it has become easy for eCommerce businesses to collect numerous amount of data about related to customers’ demographics, market segments and market trends. However, in order to make competitive business decisions in this marketing era, these data must be analysed. The common technique in many eCommerce applications is Clustering[4].

Historical Overview

Clustering has a rich history in other disciplines such as biology, psychiatry, psychology, archaeology, geology, geography, and marketing. Other terms more or less synonymous with clustering include unsupervised learning, numerical taxonomy, vector quantization, and learning by observation. The field of spatial analysis of point patterns is also related to cluster analysis. According to JSTOR [1] data clustering first appeared in the title of a 1954 article dealing with anthropological data. Data clustering is also known as Q-analysis, typology, clumping, and taxonomy depending on the field where it is applied. There are several books published on data clustering. Clustering algorithms have also been extensively studied in data mining and machine learning. [4] [5]

The Main Elements of Data Clustering

Although the intuitive idea behind cluster analysis is simple, the successful completion of the tasks presumes a large number of correct decisions and choices from several alternatives. Below are the main elements of data clustering technology[7]:

Data presentation.

Choice of objects.

Choice of variables.

What to cluster: data units or variables.

Normalization of variables.

Choice of dis-similarity measures.

Choice of clustering criterion (objective function).

Choice of missing data strategy.

Algorithms and computer implementation (and their reliability)

Number of clusters.

Interpretation of results.

Data Clustering Algorithms Classification

Clustering algorithms may be viewed as schemes that providing sensible clustering by considering only a small fraction of the set containing all possible partitions of X. The result depends on the specific algorithm and the criteria used. Clustering algorithms may be divided into the following major categories[7] [8] [10]

Sequential algorithms: These algorithms produce a single clustering.

Hierarchical clustering algorithms: These schemes are further divided into:

Agglomerative algorithms: These algorithms produce a sequence of clustering of decreasing number of clusters at each step.

Divisive algorithms: These algorithms act in the opposite direction; that is, they produce a sequence of clustering of increasing m at each step

Clustering algorithms based on cost function optimization: This category contains algorithms in which "sensible" is quantified by a cost function in terms of which a clustering is evaluated. This Category includes the following subcategories:

Hard or crisp clustering algorithms: where a vector belongs exclusively to a specific cluster.

Probabilistic clustering algorithms: forming a special type of hard clustering algorithms that follow Bayesian classification arguments.

Fuzzy clustering algorithms: where a vector belongs to a specific cluster up to a certain degree.

Possibilistic clustering algorithms: In this case It uses a completely probabilistic approach.

Boundary detection algorithms: Instead of determining the clusters by the feature vectors themselves, these algorithms adjust iteratively the boundaries of the regions where clusters lie.

Other: This last category contains some special clustering techniques that do not fit nicely in any of the previous categories. These include:

Branch and bound clustering algorithms: These algorithms provide globally optimal clustering without having to consider all possible clusterings.

Genetic clustering algorithms: These algorithms use an initial population of possible clusterings and iteratively generate new populations, which, in general, contain better clusterings than those of the previous generations, according to a pre-specified criterion.

Stochastic relaxation methods: These are methods that guarantee, under certain conditions, convergence in probability to the globally optimum clustering, with respect to a pre-specified criterion, at the expense of intensive computations.

Valley-seeking clustering algorithms: These algorithms treat the feature vectors as instances of a (multidimensional) random variable x.

Competitive learning algorithms: These are iterative schemes that do not employ cost functions.

Algorithms based on morphological transformation techniques: These algorithms use morphological transformations in order to achieve better separation of the involved clusters.

Density-based algorithms: These algorithms view the clusters as regions in the dimensional space that are "dense" in data.

Subspace clustering algorithms: These algorithms are well suited for processing high-dimensional data sets. In some applications the dimension of the feature space can even be of the order of a few thousands.

Kernel-based methods.

Stages of Clustering Process:

Reference to Jain and Dubes, data clustering can’t be one-step process, so they divided the clustering process into the following stages[3]:

Data Collection: Includes the careful extraction of relevant data objects from the underlying data sources.

Initial Screening: Refers to the massaging of data after its extraction from the source, or sources.

Representation: Includes the proper preparation of the data in order to become suitable for the clustering algorithm.

Clustering Tendency: Checks whether the data in hand has a natural tendency to cluster or not.

Clustering Strategy: Involves the careful choice of clustering algorithm and initial parameters.

Validation: It is often based on manual examination and visual techniques.

Interpretation: This stage includes the combination of clustering results with other studies.

Applications in e-commerce

Moreover, clustering is an interesting, useful, and challenging problem. It has great potential in applications like object recognition, image segmentation, and information filtering and retrieval. However, after making several design choices carefully, it is possible to exploit this potential. [12]

Clustering applied in many eCommerce applications successfully like:

Online auction

Customer segmentation

Clustering data streams

WebPages classifications

Clustering eCommerce Search Engines Automatically

Discover the Preferences of Computer Criminals

Optimising E-Commerce Supply Chain Based on the Fuzzy Clustering Analysis

Conclusion

Clustering lies at the heart of data analysis and data mining applications. The ability to discover highly correlated regions of objects when their number becomes very large is highly desirable, as data sets grow and their properties and data interrelationships change.

Similarly, operating systems Clusters are rapidly becoming the solution of choice for many applications, sequential and parallel. Existing cluster operating systems have matured enough to be used in production. In addition with the advent of faster and faster network technology, clustered systems will become ever more popular. It is notable that any clustering is a division of the objects into groups based on a set of rules it is neither true nor false. [11] [13]

Bibliography

[1] "the free dictionary.com." [Online]. Available: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cluster. [Accessed: 17-Mar-2012].

[2] R. Rist, "e-Architecture," 2012.

[3] A. K. J. and R. C. Dubes., Algorithms for Clustering Data, 1st ed. Prentice-Hall, 1988.

[4] W. Jank and G. Shmueli, Eds., Statistical Methods in e-Commerce Research: Statistics in Practice. WILEY, 2008.

[5] T. Sterling, Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux. MIT Press, 2001, pp. 1-469.

[6] A. K. Jain, "Data Clustering : 50 Years Beyond K-Means," Pattern Recognition Letters, 2009.

[7] S. Ayramo and T. Karkkainem, "Introduction to partitioning-based clustering methods with a robust example," FINLAND, 2006.

[8] C. IYIGUN, "Probabilistic distance clustering," 2007.

[9] "A Tutorial on Clustering Algorithms." [Online]. Available: http://home.dei.polimi.it/matteucc/Clustering/tutorial_html/. [Accessed: 17-Mar-2012].

[10] K. K. Sergios Theodoridis, Pattern Recognition, 4th ed. Academic Press, 2008.

[11] P. Andritsos, "Data Clustering Techniques: Qualifying Oral Examination Paper," Measurement. Toronto, 2002.

[12] P. . F. JAIN, A.K. , M.N. MURTY, "Data Clustering : A Review," ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 31, no. 3, 1999.

[13] R. W. Clarke and B. T. B. Lee, "Cluster Operating Systems Background."

Online Banking

Online banking is the practice of making bank transactions or paying bills via the Internet. Most traditional banks offer online banking services. However, although online banking has not been fully accepted by customers, many banking-related resources are being utilized, like using eMail to communicate with the customers for notifications or for financial reports as a cost effective alternative. (1) (2)

Banking industry ultimate goal is to carry many of their transactions through the web, consumers’ reluctance has kept this business from exploding, anyhow reference to McKinsey& company Surveys showed that it is generally believed that a secure nationwide electronic banking system is almost in place. Soon people will use their PCs and the Web to do all types of banking activities. (3) (4)

In one of their evaluation study of leading online bank operations, Keynote [1] showed that, Wachovia, National City and Bank of America lead in customer experience for online banking. On the other hand, websites in terms of overall online excellence according to the Keynote WebExcellence Scorecard Chase including Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America were determined to be the best. Whilst, Wachovia ranked first in the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings. (5)

Practically the advantages of online banking are to reduce overlay for high street rates, staff, uniforms, paperwork and avoiding the cost of transporting and handling of cash. However, The main cons that, consumers can’t walk into a branch and withdraw cash; they are restricted to online purchases, many security requirements are too difficult for regular users to follow, and believe that some marketing-related messages about safety and security actually mislead users. Furthermore it’s important to consider that is what kind of computer systems people use for online banking, linux, windows, etc. (6) (7)

References

1. what is online banking. wiseGeek. [Online] [Cited: 27 feb 2012.] http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-online-banking.htm.

2. Bidgoli, Hossein. Electronic Commerce:Principles and Practice. s.l. : Academic Press, 2002. 0-12-095977-1.

3. Andam, Zurayda Ruth. e-Commerce and e-Business: e-Asean Task Force . s.l. : UNDP and APDIP, 2003.

4. McKinsey survey. [Online] McKinsey & Company. [Cited: 27 feb 2012.]

5. MATEO, SAN. Keynote: the mobile and internet performace authority. [Online] 18 April 2006. [Cited: 27 feb 2012.] http://www.keynote.com/company/press_room/releases_2006/04.18.06.html.

6. Mohammad Mannan, P.C. van Oorschot. Security and Usability:The Gap in Real-World Online Banking. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada : School of Computer Science, Carleton University, 2007.

7. Cronin, Marry J. Banking and Finance on the Internet. s.l. : John Wiley and Sons., 1997. 978-0471292197.

Online Auction Sites

Online auction site, is a virtual auction house uses the method of selling on the Internet in a public forum through open and competitive bidding. This technology started in the mid of nineteen’s, using several auction types; like the most popular: English Auction, where the auctioneer opens the auction by announcing a Suggested Opening Bid, increasing in price if the item is being sold to competing buyers or decreasing in price in a reverse auction with competing sellers. (1) (2)

There are thousands of categories of items listed for sale on the auction sites, and a number of schemes, including PayPal which allows the integration with popular auction sites so that a user selling an item by auction can automatically accept an account transfer payment from the winning bidder. This leads to the question of, what is those sites revenue source comes from? eBay and Amzon.com are two samples of the most popular auction sites, and both integrated with PayPal their revenues are coming from the right choice of listed category, and both sellers’ and buyers’ commissions, where PayPal investing with those sites through transmission rates, what makes these fees tend to be much lower for Internet auctions than for traditional auction houses. (3) (1)

By increasing offer convenience for both geographic and temporal, and with IT technology, it becomes easier and cheaper to find a single item from the millions of listings on an auction site than in a traditional auction house form consumers perspective. On the other hand auction sites avoids stopping business to go through the traditional sale method, reduces the distribution cost of a product reduces the distribution cost of a product, helps small businesses to open new international market, and to sell their seasonal, discontinued or damaged goods often with profits. (4)

References

1. Donal O’Mahony,Michael Peirce, Hitesh Tewari. Electronic Payment Systems for E-Commerce.

2. English-Auction. Business Dictionary.com. [Online] [Cited: Feb 9, 2012.] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/English-auction.html.

3. fees. ebay.com. [Online] [Cited: Feb 9, 2012.] http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.

4. onlineauctions.phoenix. [Online] [Cited: Feb 9, 2012.] http://onlineauctions.phoenix-blogs.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-online-auction-sites/.

Electronic Wallet "e-Wallet"

e-Wallet which is also known as "Digital Wallet", is a software functioning similar to the physical wallet, commercially available for pocket, palm-sized, handheld, and desktop PCs. It allows the users for online shopping; it stores personal and financial information such as credit cards, passwords and PINs. Offering a secure, convenient, and portable tool for shopping and eBusiness purposes. (12)

Generally, user groups including teenagers, young adults, mothers and businessmen are mainly getting the benefit of eWallet the most, that's what make several security requirements should be taken into consideration to operate such a technology including trust assumptions that it is mutually between both credential keeper and agent, trusted credential medium and trusted mobile device by the user. On the other hand, availability, integrity, confidentiality, and loss-tolerance that Loss, theft or breakdown of device or communication protocols shall be recoverable without loss to the user. (2)

From eCommerce adapter view, eWallet revenues are hard to predict for the content providers. eWallet websites with too many banners generally annoy customers. Moreover subscription to those websites may not suit those who only want a small portion of the information or services they are paying for. (3)

Microsoft Wallet is a popular example of an e-wallet. By establishing a Microsoft passport [1] which consists of many services including eWallet Service, it made it faster and easier to purchase online. This technology eliminate refilling the personal data each and every online purchase, especially for the frequent shoppers. That makes the online shopping experience higher in speed and efficiency. (12) (4)

References

1. Electronic Commerce:Principles and Practice. Bidgoli, Hossein. s.l. : Academic Press , 2002. 0-12-095977-1.

2. On-Line E-Wallet System with Decentralized Credential Keepers. Stig F. Mjølsnes, Chunming Rong. s.l. : Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands, 2003, Vol. 8.

3. Portal-NetPay Micro-payment System for Non-Micro-payment Vendors. Shymal Chandra, Xiaoling Dai. Suva, Fiji : iiWAS 2009 ERPAS, 2009.

4. Windows Live ID. [Online] Microsoft. [Cited: 26 Feb 2012.] https://accountservices.passport.net/ppnetworkhome.srf?vv=1200&mkt=EN-US&lc=1033.

e-Checks

eCheck is an electronic version of a paper check that uses the same legal and business protocols associated with traditional paper checks except it is made via the internet. It can be processed in fewer steps and has more security features than a regular paper check including authentication, public key cryptography, digital signatures and encryption. Moreover an eCheck can be used by large and small organizations, especially when it is too risky or not appropriate to use other electronic payment solutions. (1) (2)

How it works? (1)

Customers write eChecks on the computer, sign them using digital signature.

eChecks encrypted.

Customers send the eCheck via an appropriate transmission intermediary (i.e. internet or telephone) to the payee.

Payee receives the e-check, verifies the signature, and endorses it.

The endorsed e-check is sent over the web to the payee’s bank.

The bank verifies the signature and deposits the e-check into payee account.

The eCheck is cleared by sending it to the customer's bank.

The amount is debited from the customer's account.

eChecks technology is the first and only electronic payment mechanism chosen by the U.S. Treasury for example, in order to make high-value payments over the public Internet in corporate with The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC). Because of the high check processing, the very low transaction cost, eliminate costly input errors, decrease bank fees associated with check returns and processing and rapid and secure settlement of financial obligations.

However, nevertheless of all the key advantages of using eChecks, a bundle of threats must be considered for using this technology including security concerns and the danger of human error or equipment failure which can jeopardize the accuracy of transmissions or records. (1) (3) (4)

References

1. Bidgoli, Hossein. Electronic Commerce:Principles and Practice. s.l. : Academic Press, 2002. 0-12-095977-1.

2. Electronic Check. Investopedia.com. [Online] Investopedia ULC, 2012. [Cited: 18 Feb 2012.] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/electroniccheck.asp.

3. check. Wells Fargo. [Online] [Cited: 18 Feb 2012.] https://www.wellsfargo.com/biz/merchant/options/check.

4. eHow.com. [Online] Demand Media, Inc. [Cited: 18 Feb 2012.] http://www.ehow.com/list_5765083_advantages-disadvantages-electronic-checks.html.

e-Cash Subset of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)

eCash is a computer generated internet based system which allows funds to be transferred and items to be purchased by credit card, check or by money order, 

providing secure on-line transaction processing, through computer-based systems. These are ranging from ATM network transactions used in small retail-shops to international large-turnover networks like Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS). Conceptually, eCash involves three parties- the buyer (transaction initiator), the seller, who demands the payment and obtains a unique certificate through the intermediary. And the intermediary which is the computer-based system. (1) (2) (3)

Technically, the users download eMoney from their bank accounts, using special software and stores the eCash on their local hard drive, the eCash user goes through the software to pay the desired amount from "eWallet" to the payee local hard drive ("wallet") after passing the transaction through an eCash bank for authenticity verification. The payee can then pay its bills/payroll with this eCash or upload it to the merchant's hard currency bank account. (1)

eCash companies revenues are coming from payees and from royalties paid by banks which provide customers with eCash software/hardware for a small monthly fee. Whilst, transactions between individuals would not be subject to a fee (4).

Some of the popular e-cash companies include CheckFree, Clickshare, Cyber-Cash, Digicash, eCoin.Net, and MilliCent. However, the evolutionary standpoints for this technology is conducting payments without carrying wads of cash, saving time because of the instantaneous updating of account balances, reducing the cost for paper handling, no bounced checks and the most interesting it’s protects its user against theft . on contrary, Hackers with good skill able to hack into bank accounts and illegally retrieve of banking records. money laundering and tax evasion could be uncontrollable as criminals use untraceable internet transaction and low income groups without computer and internet access are unable to enjoy the usage of eCash (12) (6).

References

1. Money in electronic commerce: digital cash, electronic fund transfer, and Ecash. Panurach, Patiwat. 6, Bangkok, Thailand : Communications of the ACM, June 1996 , Vol. 39.

2. Barron's Banking Dictionary:Electronic Check. Answer.com. [Online] [Cited: Feb 18, 2012.] http://www.answers.com/topic/electronic-check.

3. ECASH. [Online] eCash Technologies, Inc. [Cited: 3 1, 2012.] www.ecash.com.

4. Donal O’Mahony,Michael Peirce, Hitesh Tewari. Electronic Payment Systems for E-Commerce.

5. Electronic Commerce:Principles and Practice. Bidgoli, Hossein. s.l. : Academic Press , 2002. 0-12-095977-1.

6. Jeremy S. Craig,Joseph N. Pierre,Mark Townsend,Gary W. Hart,Derek R. Cox. Toward a System of Checks and Balances for Electronic. Atlanta, : Kennesaw State Uni.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are type of advertising over the internet, in a form of graphic and/or advertising image that displays the name or the identification of a particular website. Banners sizes have been standardized to some extent by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) [1] . (23) (12)

Banners ads are firstly used by Prodigy "a company owned by IBM and Sears " in 1980s to promote Sears products, but it’s widely been used early 1990s. The banner ads are displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser; this is called "impression". On the other hand banners can be "clickable"; that the viewer clicks on the banner and redirected to the website advertised in the banner. Generally all marketing aspects of the real world are also applied on the virtual world of the internet, in which is called eMarketing. Banner should be placed on sites that attract large traffic, as well as being placed in a relevant website to the advertised website or product. (3)

Banner advertising is one of the dominant modes of online advertising in addition to the contextual and sponsored search advertising. The cost of banner ads varies with the popularity and the traffic that the sponsoring site carries, for instance banners in Yahoo! Mail costing much but profiting much more. Whilst designing banners itself is not costly issue, www.bannerite.com  for example is a web page that designs banners customized for customers costing $24.95 per banner.

Nevertheless the profits and marketing success of the banners facilitate over the internet, it is seen that none- compliance to the banners standard sizes generally frustrating the webpage viewers which generally might affect the carrier website Itself. (4)