Development of E-Commerce Payment Mechanism - Essay Example

Development of E-Commerce Payment Mechanism E-Commerce is a short form of Electronic Commerce. E-commerce relates to conduct of business through the use of electronic mechanism, in particular the internet. In other words it is the purchasing, selling and exchanging of goods and services over computer networks. All transactions and terms of sale are executed electronically. It is typically regarded as a business model or a segment of a larger business model. There are different types of e-commerce. These include: Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), Consumer to Business (C2B) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C). On the other hand, the government utilizes e-commerce to conduct national business. Forms of e-commerce in the government administration include: Government to Government (G2G), Government to Citizen (G2C), Government to Business G2B) and Government to Employee (G2E) among others (Rainer and Casey, 2009). E-commerce has greatly contributed to the creation of the world as a global market. Major benefits of e-commerce, and which have made majority of the businesses to embrace e-commerce, it’s the convenience and efficiency achieved. This is because transactions conducted through the internet, or electronically take shortest time compared to physical transactions. Consequently, since e-commerce is essentially involves buying and selling, there is need for a business to develop or make use of an electronic or e-commerce payment system. There are varieties of these e-commerce or electronic payment mechanisms that a business can choose from. Nevertheless, some businesses consider the use of multiple electronic payment mechanisms. These is due to the fact that there different consumers may be subscribed to different electronic payment mechanisms. On the other hand, a consumer may be subscribed to multiple electronic payment systems. Hence, in using multiple payment mechanisms, businesses aim at reaching consumers from all over the world and providing them with convenience in transacting. These e-commerce payment mechanisms include: credit cards and debit cards. Examples of credit and debit cards are Masters and Visa cards. With credit cards the amount or bill is deducted later, while with debit cards the amount is deducted directly from the consumers’ bank account. The consumers bear banks and other finance charges such as interests and maintenance fees. Following this, there legal requirements or business law that guides those engaged in electronic commerce or business. There are several policies that guide Australia in the area of e-commerce. Further, the Australian Legal framework on e-commerce is provided for through The Electronic Transactions Act 1999. This was a great significance since it was showed support and encouraged the development of e-commerce in Australia. The Electronic Transaction Act was undertaken in two stages. The First Stage was executed before 1 July, 2001 and the act only applied to those laws of the Commonwealth that specified in the Electronic Transaction regulations 2000. The Second Stage undertaken on and after 1 July, 2001 applied to all laws of the Commonwealth unless they were specifically exempted from application of the Act by the Electronic Transactions Regulations. This Act constitutes rules and guidelines essential for the interpretation an understanding of legislation in e-commerce. E-commerce cuts across most policy areas surrounding the business world. These policy areas include: competition, consumer and privacy protection, tax, trade and labor market policy. These policy areas have a great and significance impact in the conduct of e-commerce in Australia and the world at large. In upholding these policy areas means that there are laws pertaining or affecting e-commerce. Therefore, these policy areas are linked to their subsequent acts. Certain acts and laws that address e-commerce include: the Commonwealth’s Trade Practices Act 1974, the Commonwealth’s Privacy Act 1988 and the Cybercrime Act 2001. The consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline business transactions. The capabilities of the e-commerce to supersede geographical boundaries through the help of the internet pauses a challenge to firms in a single industry engaging in electronic business transactions. Due to this, e-commerce has the potential to make it easier for new entrants to enter into the markets hence bringing in high level s of competition. Following this, there was a need to develop and implement a completion policy to protect e-commerce. On the other hand, e-commerce creates a room for economies of scale and existence of network externalities which lead to establishment of a monopoly while deterring competition. The need to protect and upheld the privacy of the consumers engaged in e-commerce led to the development of Consumer and privacy protection policy. There are situations in e-commerce that require the businesses to ask for their consumer’s personal information. For instance, health care service providers and other companies or institutions that trade in personal information should ensure that such information is held confidentially in databases where third parties cannot have access. In addition, consumers using the internet are also protected through the use of this policy, particularly from deceive. Furthermore, e-commerce may not be resourceful to the government in terms of taxation. This is because there are many businesses that are conducted online of which go unnoticed by the government for tax purposes and hence these businesses do not pay taxes. Following this, the tax policy was developed to provide taxation guidelines to those engaged in e-commerce, whether as consumers or companies. Another policy that can be addressed concurrently with the tax policy is the trade policy that concerns tariffs. This is because; the ease of e-commerce to break geographical barriers makes it easy for companies to evade tariffs and other trade policy measures. Consumers may not be aware of this and hence the need to develop and implement trade policy towards e-commerce. Nevertheless, e-commerce has an influence on the labor market, education and regional development. E-commerce creates employment opportunities. In addition, it integrates quite a variety of skills acquired from many people in different parts of the world. To encourage this as well as ensure that regulations concerning employees are adhered to, labor market and education policies are applicable in Australia’s e-commerce sector. The policies are aimed at ensuring that employees are not exploited by online companies and institutions and that they employees are engaged in new and more advanced skills. Finally, we cannot rule out the fact that, e-commerce has a positive impact on the regional development in any state or territory. One major impact is the acquisition of foreign exchange. Like any other business, there are investors in e-commerce. Therefore, regionally based businesses are more likely to succeed in the global market if there are major investors in new technology, are focused on exports and are competent in the use on information technology and e-commerce. Therefore, since e-commerce has a great significance in regional businesses, there was the need to develop a regional development policy The Electronic Transactions Act ensures that some key requirements are adhered to in electronic form under the Commonwealth Law. These requirements include: information regarding electronic business should be recorded or retained; documents should be produced in material form, provision of a hand written signature and information should be given in writing. On the other hand, Australia considered developing a uniform legislation with States and other Territories. Uniform legislation on e-commerce is aimed at removing legally created obstacles to the development of e-commerce throughout Australia. This was achieved through the office of the Australian Attorney General based on the uniform Electronic Transactions Bill 2000. Hence, each state and territory has its own Electronic Transactions act. However, the Australian’s Federal, State and Territory governments have agreed to update their legal framework for e-commerce. The new bill referred to as the ‘Model Electronic Transactions Amendment Bill 2010 will soon be in effect. The new bill has some variations with the Commonwealth Electronic Transactions Act. The new law is aimed at increasing certainty concerning international trade and encourages the further growth of e-commerce. On the other hand, the new law will have major impact on Australia’s e-commerce. Following this, there are three areas that will be strengthened. These include: the determination of a party’s location in an electronic environment, the use of automated message systems for contact information and the time and place to dispatch and receive electronic information. In addition, these laws will be applicable to both domestic and international e-commerce contracts and transactions. There are a range of services provided through website with the help of the internet. These services include: dating, learning, travelling, research and writing among others. These services are provided by companies or institutions in the world where majority of these companies or institutions deals particularly with a single service. Businesses achieve this through creation of a website. A company or an institution emulates how they want their website to look like and it is the duty of designated web designer to design the website in accordance with the requirements of the company or institutions. The website bears information concerning that company or institution. These include but not limited to: the name of the company, the company’s trademark, logo or emblem, mission, vision, the kind of the service it offers, recent financial statement, location, careers and FAQs among others. On the other hand, a company or an institution engaging in e-commerce or that which has its own website should aim at developing a good website. Good website will be the foundation of the kind of business the company will engage in and whether it will be productive and capable of meeting the company’s objective. This is because a website is a direct reflection of the company and the business it is running. The site should look professional and eye-catching to anyone who bumps into it. Website varies from one company to another in terms of simplicity and complexity. All in all a business’ website features depends on the type of business, its most appropriate features and budget allocation for web design and development. Consequently, there are certain website features that relate to a bad or a good website. Features of a good website, that is, a functional, dynamic and attractive website are as follows. The main page of the website should be specific. This means that the website is capable of letting the customers know what the particular company is offering. If they fail to know this hustle-free or outwardly, they will not waste their time looking for it. In addition, the website should bear the business’ privacy policy with regards to personal information gathered from the website visitors. It is important to make the visitor understand why the business requires the personal information and its usage thereof. This creates the website visitor confidence in the business and may establish the visitor’s loyalty as well. Another feature of a good website is the integration of ‘About us’ page. The ‘About us’ page should bear the name of the company, its picture, biography and contact information. This will ensure that the website visitor understand the business the company is engaged in as well as provide a base of making future business decisions. In addition, in a good website it is easy to navigate from one page to another. Usually, a company provides links or DOI links where the visitor is able to move to the next page or acquire extra information regarding the current page. For instance, further information on a car model in an automobile website. Links and DOI’s are very convenient and effective in terms of time saving. Usually, website visitors or even the clients are not willing to take long in a company’s website; they want instant results. Other general features of a good website relates to color, grammar and organization. With regards to organization, there should be the use of tables to neatly align the links and maintain a nice organized and uniform appearance of the website. This is also achieved when a company chooses a one particular color to make the background of the website or for texts. Therefore, it is important to achieve a consistency with background themes and colors on the website. In addition, there should be no grammatical or spelling mistakes which depict a lot of unprofessionalism. In achieving all these, it is vital to view the websites from different browsers or screens so as to know how other people will see the website. Further, additional information regarding the company should be continually added since it gives or provides the company’s clients a reason to come back again (Chakrabarti, 2002). The contrary of the features of good website represents the features of a bad website. A bad website is that which appears unprofessional. In addition to this, features of a bad or even worst website include the following. The background of the website appears to be very busy and distracting by certain windows that appear when the visitor is trying to read through the contents of the website. This distraction makes it hard for one to read the text. The distraction can be accompanied by a combination of colors that makes the text even harder to read. The texts may be too small to read, while some text is underlined when it does not represent a link. A combination of these features creates a bad website. The links available in the website may also create a bad website. One aspect of such links is the lack of clarity as to where they will lead the website visitor. In addition to this, certain links are malfunctioning, that is, they either did not work or do not work anymore. Further, some texts may be underlined that do not represent a link; hence bringing in confusion with other ‘true’ links. Another feature of a bad website relates to graphics used therein. Graphics may result to a bad website if at all they are very large graphic files that take a very long time to load. Some graphics may be too large to fit on the screen, while others are missing. Another aspect is that some graphics have been integrated in the website and they virtually do not have any meaning or significance to the website. These are among the many features of a bad, worse or even worst website. Companies should make use of certain measures to ensure that they develop a good and professional website (Levine, 2003). Companies engaging in e-commerce integrate a location in the website for linkage and communication with the consumer. Usually the consumer is required to have subscribed for these services and in other situations the institution or company might require contact information regarding the consumer, in particular the consumer’s e-mail address. The section for the consumer provides for the consumer to place an order or request for the company’s services. Following this, the consumer is given a chance to select the e-commerce payment mechanism that he or she is most comfortable with or as the company may require. On the other hand, majority of online or e-commerce transactions require the consumer to make payment after been offered the service or concurrently. Another consideration that can be made concerning e-commerce is the fact that one is bound to find virtually anything in the internet. This means that there may be misleading websites, while others are related to companies or institutions that are not in existence. Issues concerning e-commerce should also be addressed. One legal regulation in Australia concerning business transactions conducted through the electronic media is ‘cybercrime’. Following this, the Cybercrime Act 2001 addresses issues pertaining to malpractices surrounding e-commerce. The Cybercrime Act provides a number of investigation powers and criminal offence designed to protect the security, reliability and integrity of information obtained via information technology systems with the help of the internet. The Act outlaws electronic malpractices such as impersonation, unauthorized access to restricted information, spreading of malicious programs (viruses) and computer hacking among others. In order to achieve the above, that is, a viable electronic environment, it is crucial to understand the legal and management implications of operating in an electronic environment. The most critical consideration is management of records acquired electronically. The company should establish of policies and guidelines for managing electronic records. Personal information should not be disbursed to a third party; unless upon authorization from the owner or an order from the court of law or any other jurisdiction. One consideration is the maintenance of electronic records reliably and securely. The record keeping systems should meet legal and administrative requirements as well as national and international standards and practices in an electronic environment. Another management and legal consideration relates to the retaining and disposing electronic records. States and Territories establish particular policies that address the disposition issue of electronic records and equipment. For instance, electronic equipment should be disposed of according to Computing and Information Services Electronic Equipment Disposition Policy. Sensitive and confidential information should be handled with utmost due care. Electronic records should be understandable and usable for immediate and long term purposes. In addition, they should be inviolate and secure, that is, they should be protected from accidental or intentional alteration and from deletion. Further, only authorized personnel should be permitted to create, capture or purge electronic records. In order to achieve all these, the employees should be offered training regarding the new environments since it is also very important that they understand the legal and management implications in an electronic environment (McWay, 2009). Another aspect that should be considered concerning electronic environment is to perform an analysis on the training needs required for the organization to operate in the new environment. This can be effectively achieved through establishment of e-marketing strategy. The e-marketing strategy has some key characteristics. These include: continuous internal and external s canning of the environment, clarity of the objectives, analysis of stages for achieving a strategy and capability to foresee problems that may emerge during the process. An organization should strive to educate employees on the e-marketing strategies and its characteristics as well. The human resource department is entitled to equip the employees with the skills necessary to ensure that they comfortable with the new environment. In the light of all the above, e-commerce is a very important sector in the current world. This is because almost every nation, state or territory has become digitally connected. Following this, legal procedures and policies in e-commerce should be established and adhered with by firms practicing e-commerce. These firms should understand the necessities in ensuring that they develop good or professional website. There should be an understanding of the legal and management implications for operating in an electronic environment. In addition to this, an analysis of training requirement is essential for e-commerce businesses so as to equip every stakeholder with the necessary skills suitable for an electronic environment. References Chakrabarti, (2002). The Asians Manager’s Handbook of E-commerce, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, United Kingdom. Levine, Michael, (2003), Guerrilla PR Wired: Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline and Everywhere in Between, McGraw-Hill Professional, United Kingdom. McWay, Dana, (2009), Legal and Ethical Aspects of Health Information Management, 3rd Edition, Cengage Learning, Belmont. Rainer, Kelly R. & Casey, C.G. (2009). Introduction to Information Systems: Enabling and Transforming Business, 3rd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. http://www.ema.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/e commerce_Australiaslegalframeworkforelectroniccommerce http://www.ecommercereport.com.au/?p=1417 Read More