Review a local e-commerce site (Malaysia)  

Posted by Bob

In this e-century, e-commerce has available in Malaysia for a long period. Athough it exist for a long time, there still not all of the Malaysian using the e-commerce service. As you know, the level of trust of Malyasian to e-commerce is still low but the amount of internet users are rise rapidly. There are still lots of sucessful e-commerce websites built in Malaysia. Now let us go through on few Malaysia's e-commerce websites.

One of the Most Popular Auction Website
Lelong.com.my

History
History Interbase Resources Sdn. Bhd. is a relatively young company that has come a long way from its humble beginnings. Since its inception at the end of 1998, the firm has quickly established a firm footing in the e-commerce arena. As the founders of the pioneer auction website (http://www.lelong.com.my) in Malaysia, Interbase has secured its position with the largest subscriber base for any site of this genre. With a mission statement of "Serving the community and bringing a high standard of quality into homes and businesses by providing an avenue for on-line trading at a low cost", the staff behind Malaysia's premier auction site continually strive to improve and develop its functionality without levying high costs.

Below is the front page of Lelong.com.my (4th July 2008)


Main Income
1. Fees

(i) Membership

(ii) Posting auction/sales

(iii) D.I.Y. Banner Advertisement

2. Advertistment
Other websites' advertistment

Selling System

Maximum Bid / AutoBid / ProxyBid
Each time you enter a Maximum Bid, your automatic proxy, AutoBid goes to work for you. AutoBid lets you set an upper bidding limit, which is your Maximum Bid, while keeping your actual bids as low as possible. If another party beats your initial bid, AutoBid raises your bid by one single increment more than the challenging bid. This pattern continues until another bidder exceeds your Maximum Bid, or until you win the auction.


Payment Channel

1. Online Credit Card

-Visa / Master

2. Interbank Transfer / Giro / Bank Counter

-Maybank

-Alliance Bank

3. E-banking Payment

-Open Bill Payment








4. Cheque Payment

5. Cash - in Lelong office

E-Banking In Malaysia
Pbebank.com

Pbebank.com is a online banking website that under Public Bank Berhad, Malaysia. It's establish to giving convienice for their customers to make online transaction, bill payment, and etc.

Below is the front page of pbebank.com.my(4th July 2008)

Services Provided

1.Realtime Account Inquiry
Keep track of your financial status anytime, anywhere with PBeBank.com. You can view your latest account balance, account details, and account transaction history online.

2.Payment History
Keep track of your past online payments as far back as 6 months at PBeBank.com and with complete details including date, type, reference number and amount.

3.Funds Transfers and Payments
With PBeBank.com, you can conveniently perform funds transfers to any accounts in Public Bank and other local banks. In addition, you can also make credit card and loan payments online.

4.Online Share Trading

5.Others service.

Conclusion
As a conlusion, it's still a new market for Malaysia in e-commerce. Since the total demand of online buyer grow rapidly, entrepreneur should build up a new e-commerce sites to gain online market share while there are still have oputunity in the internet.

References:

Malaysia's Auction Websites

http://www.lelong.com.my/

http://www.mudah.com.my/

Malaysia's Online Banking Websites

http://www.pbebanking.com,my/

http://www.maybank2u.com.my/

http://www.rhbbank.com.my/

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Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.  

Posted by Steven

CORPORATE BLOGGING


A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.Company blogs executed well build credibility and project a message of selfconfidence.Examples of reasons to start a corporate blog would include; Employment Branding, ProductLaunch, Public Relations, Marketing Campaigns, Consulting Services, Vendor Relations, Media Relations,and Innovative Ideas used to established Industry Expertise.

Blogging evangelists often speak of a conversation taking place in marketplaces.Participating in the blogging world gives companies a competitive edge in that conversation. Bloggers are early adopters, expert networkers, and skilled at gathering competitive intelligence. Companies who start a blog canbring those skills in house and learn the language and etiquette of blogging, learning to engage these individuals in achieving goals. Companies that fail to engage in this conversation now will find themselves playing catch-up for years to come.Corporate blogs primarily are used for national branding. They allow companies to present accurate information without the filter of the media or advertising.

Marketing blogs can be used to amplify marketing messages through traditional channels. The use of a blog allows a company to provide a destination of information for consumers, from commercials to promotional coupons, to directions on how to use products.Employment blogs allow a direct connection to online communities, increasing the number of qualifiedapplicants by identifying communities of interest and building a loyal talent pool. Public Relations blogs allow a corporation to put a human touch in place of the often used “corporate speak.”




From pictures of employees to CEO blogs, to instructions on how to interview, public relationsblogs remind readers that your company is staffed by real people.These are few examples of successful corporate blogs Microsoft, GM, T-Mobile, Emerson, IBM, Pfizer, Boeing, Google, Sun.

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E-auction Fraud and Its Prevention  

Posted by JenNy


Electronic auctions (e-auctions), auctions conducted online, have been inexistence for several years on local area networks and werestarted on the Internet in 1995. Host sites on the Internet serve as brokers, offeringservices that enable sellers to post their goods for sale and allow buyers to bidon those items.Although the majority of consumer goods are not suitable for auctions and arebest sold through conventional sales techniques (i.e., posted-price retailing), the flexibility offered by online auction trading may offer innovative market processes.For example, instead of searching for products and vendors by visiting sellers’Websites, a buyer may solicit offers from all potential sellers. Such a buying mechanismis so innovative that it has the potential to be used for almost all types of consumer goods.


So, the things that consumer take note to prevent e-auction fraud would be as follow:

  • User identity verification. A voluntary program, encourages users to supply auction's compamy with information for online verification. By offering their Social Security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth, users canqualify for the highest level of verification.

  • Authentication service. Product authentication is a way of determining whether an item is genuine and described appropriately.Authentication is verydifficult to perform because it relies on the expertise of the authenticators.Because of their training and experience, experts can (for a fee) often detect counterfeits based on subtle details. However, two expert authenticators may have different opinions about the authenticity of the same item.

  • Grading services. Grading is a way of determining the physical condition ofan item, such as “poor quality” or “mint condition.” The actual grading system depends on the type of item being graded. Different items have different gradingsystems—for example, trading cards are graded from A1 to F1, whereas coins are graded from poor to perfect uncirculated.

  • Feedback Forum. The auction's company Feedback Forum allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals.

  • Insurance policy. Auction's compamy offers insurance underwritten by Lloyd’s of London.Users are covered up to $200, with a $25 deductible. The program is provided at no cost to users.

  • Escrow services. For items valued at more than $200 or when either a buyer or seller feels the need for additional security, auction's company recommends escrow services(for a fee). With an easy-to-access link to a third-party escrow service, bothpartners in a deal are protected. The buyer mails the payment to the escrow service,which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checksout. At that point, the seller ships the goods to the buyer. After an agreed-uponinspection period, the buyer notifies the service, which then sends a check to theseller. (An example of a provider of online escrow services is tradenable.com.)

  • Nonpayment punishment. Auction's company implemented a policy against those who do not honor their winning bids.To help protect sellers, a first-time nonpayment results in a friendly warning.A sterner warning is issued for a second-time offense, a 30-day suspension for a third offense, and indefinite suspension for a fourth offense.

  • Appraisal services. Appraisers use a variety of methods to appraise items,including expert assessment of authenticity and condition and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace in recent months. Anappraised value is usually accurate at the time of appraisal but may change overtime as an item becomes more or less popular in the marketplace.

  • Verification. One way of confirming the identity and evaluating the conditionof an item is through verification.With verification, neutral third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purposes. This provides a way of tracking an item if it changes ownership in the future.

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E-Goverment in Malaysia  

Posted by ric86




IMPLEMENTATION OF E-GOVERNMENT PROJECTS IN
MALAYSIA and citizen's adoption strategies

Most of the e-Government project implementations are currently in progress. The detailed objectives and status of each of the e-government implementation as at May 2007 is as follows:

1.Electronic Procurement (eP) Project
The electronic procurement system, better known as ePerolehan, streamlines government procurement activities and improves the quality of service it provides. E-Perolehan converts traditional procurement processes in the Government machinery to electronic procurement on the Internet and can be accessed at www.eperolehan.com.my. With ePerolehan, all suppliers can obtain tender documents and submit bids through the Internet. The suppliers are equipped with smartcards that enable them to transact with the ePerolehan system.

2.Project Monitoring System (PMS II)
Project Monitoring System (PMS) is led by the Implementation and Co-ordination Unit (ICU) as one of the e-government projects that create a mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout various government agencies and statutory bodies. For example, project application to approval to implementation, mid-term review and completion. PMS would also provide a platform for exchanging ideas and demonstrating best practices in project implementation. The PMS is designed to provide a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of government projects.

3.Electronic Services Directory (eServices)
The next e-government project is Electronic Services Delivery (eServices). This project is a pilot project that allows citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments such as telephone and electricity bill, police summons, Road and Transport Department (RTD) services, etc. The eServices is accessed via multi channel service delivery such as the internet, interactive voice response (IVR) and 66 kiosk machines.

4.Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
The introduction of Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) as an e-government project will provide a single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiently. The objective of HRMIS is not just for record keeping but also to provide transactional functions such as leave applications, loan processing, competency management, recruitment, and selection of employees. The HRMIS project will provide a single interface for government employees to perform human resource management functions effectively and efficiently in an integrated environment.

5.Generic Office Environment (GOE)
The aim of Generic Office Environment (GOE) is to introduce a fully Integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia information technology. This will enable efficient communication, allowing collaboration across all workers, and ensuring right information reaching the right people in a timely manner The GOE project consists of modules namely Enterprise-wide Information Management System (EIMS), Enterprise-wide Communication Management System and Enterprise-Wide Collaboration Management System. The EIMS provides a universal interface for users to manage, retrieve and compose the information that they need in their day-to-day operations Via the Communication and Collaboration Management Systems. Users can also communicate and collaborate in a group to perform work functions.

6.Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)
The main objective of Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX) is to improve the mobilization of human resources and optimise work force utilisation through systematic matching of job seekers to job vacancies (Yusoff. 2002). As such, this would enable the Ministry of Human Resources (MOHR) to be a one-stop centre for labour market information that will be accessible to the public.

7.E-Syariah
The main objective of implementing E-Syariah is to improve the quality of service in Syariah courts. This will eventually enhance the Islamic Affairs Department's effectiveness through better monitoring and co-ordination of its agencies and thus improve the management of its 102 Syariah courts. The E-Syariah application consists of Syariah Court Case Management System, Office Automation System, ESyariah Portal, Syaree Lawyers Registration System and Library Management System (eSyariah). The E-Syariah project was launched in April 2002 and is expected to be fully operational in 2005. Via the system, the Syariah judges are able to have access to past cases and all the relevant information needed for a particular case quicker than before. As of April 2007, the e-Syariah has been implemented at all 110 Syariah Courts in Malaysia.
8.Other Applications
Besides the seven flagship applications, several government agencies introduced online services for the public project aims to increase the ease and efficiency of public service to the people. Among the most notable accomplishments of the government was the launch of the latest iteration of the Public Service Portal, in February 2005, with all core portal modules completed and “live” in May 2005. MyGovernment is the single gateway to information and services provided by Malaysian Government agencies on the Internet. To date, myGovernment links 900 websites across federal, state and local authorities and the Malaysian Civil Service Link. The portal will continue to grow in scope and reach as departments and agencies continue to make more services online. Other important planned enhancements include an online payment gateway, ubiquitous access through various mobile channels and single sign-on capability. Another e-government application launched by the Internal Revenue Department (IRD) is companie’s online tax. Since 2005, individuals were able to file their taxes online to IRD using MyKey. MyKey is a digital signature embedded into an individual's MyKad. It identifies and authenticates MyKad holders over the Internet, providing the capability to sign digitally a document or transaction. The Malaysia Digital Signature Act 1997 governs the MyKey.

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Potentials and consumers' adoption strategies for mobile payment system in malaysia  

Posted by ric86



Mobile payments are defined as the use of a mobile device to conduct a payment transaction in which money or funds are transferred from a payer to a receiver via an intermediary, or directly without an intermediary. While this definition includes mobile payment transactions conducted via mobile banking systems, a distinction between mobile payments and mobile banking services should be noted. Mobile banking services are based on banks’ own legacy systems and offered for the banks’ own customers.

A mobile payment as any other payment is carried out by using a specific payment instrument such as cash, credit card, or mobile phone wallet. In addition to pure mobile payment instruments, most electronic and many physical payment instruments have been "mobilized". Payments fall broadly into two categories; payments for purchases and payments of bills/invoices. In payments for purchases mobile payments compete with or complement cash, checks, credit cards, and debit cards. In payments of bills/invoices mobile payments typically provide access to account based payments such as money transfers, Internet banking payments, or direct debit assignments.

Potential of mobile phones to make the transformation
Bank Negara Malaysia sees tremendous promise in mobile telecommunication networks as an electronic payment channel since mobile phones are already in the hands of most Malaysians, with 88% of the Malaysian population subscribing to mobile phone services.

The high penetration rate affirms mobile phone networks as an increasingly popular channel for Malaysians to perform a plethora of activities beyond voice communication, encompassing all forms of digital communication, commerce, banking and payments. Indeed, payments via text messaging has the potential to grow in importance.

With 25 million mobile phone subscribers in Malaysia, there are immense opportunities to leverage on mobile phones to accelerate the migration to electronic payments, to widen the reach and appeal of electronic payment services, to deliver innovative mobile payment products that offer speed, simplicity and convenience at minimal cost for the public, as well as to provide an efficient and cost-effective method of delivering financial services even in the remote areas. The high percentage of mobile phone subscriber and the high rate of participation of the population in the banking system are important pre-conditions for the significant use of the mobile phone as an ideal platform for personal payments. Indeed, the large mobile subscriber base and the positive transformational effects of mobile banking and payments offer a unique opportunity to open up the financial system to more customers and communities, in order to achieve financial inclusion for all segments of our society.

With the favourable market conditions, various mobile banking and payment initiatives have been launched in recent years. This however, has yet to achieve widespread acceptance. To date, there are only 460,000 subscribers for mobile banking and payment services. This represents only 1.8% of the 25 million mobile phone subscribers in the country. There is, therefore, a significant untapped, and potentially lucrative market for mobile payment and banking services.


Adoption of mobile and electronic payment systems

1.Relative advantages of mobile payment systems:
Mobile payments provide consumers with ubiquitous purchase possibilities, timely access to financial assets and an alternative to cash payments. The users can, for example, pay for transportation tickets or car parking remotely without the need to visit an ATM, a ticketing machine or a parking meter . Advantages of mobile payments compared with traditional payment instruments are thus likely to pertain to time and location independent purchase possibilities.

2.Compatibility:
Compatibility captures the consistency between an innovation and the values, experiences, and needs of potential adopters. For payment systems, consumer ability to integrate them into their daily life is an important aspect of compatibility. The compatibility of mobile payments with consumers’ purchase transactions, habits, and preferences correspondingly influences the diffusion progress.

3.Complexity:
Complexity and problems with usability have contributed to the low adoption of a variety of payment systems, including smart cards and mobile banking. Similarly, ease of use and convenience have been found to affect consumer adoption of Internet payments and WAP financial services. Mobile payments are commonly expected to increase consumer convenience by reducing the need for coins and cash in small transactions and increasing the availability of purchase possibilities. Limitations in mobile device features, however, diminish the usability and user-friendliness of mobile technologies. Typical limitations include small displays and keypads, limited transmission speed and memory, and short battery life.

4.Network externalities and creation of critical mass:
Payment systems exhibit network externalities as the value of a payment system to a single user increases when more users begin to use it. Consumer decision to adopt a payment system is therefore significantly affected by the amount of other consumers and merchants using it. Failure in creating critical mass has contributed to discontinuance of several previous payment systems, including several smart card systems. As mobile payments represent a new system introduced to the market, reaching a wide enough initial adopter base of consumers and merchants is a critical success factor for m-payments as well.

5.Costs:
The cost of a payment transaction has a direct effect on consumer adoption if the cost is passed on to customers. As shoppers in electronic channels are attentive to price the transaction costs of mobile payments should be low enough to make the total cost of the purchase competitive with physical world prices.

6.Payment system security and trust in payment systems providers:
In a mobile environment, lack of consumer perceived security and trust in vendors and payment systems 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, authentication, and non-repudiation. Other security factors important for consumer adoption are anonymity and privacy, which relate to use policies of customers’ personal information and purchase records.

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The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers  

Posted by Steven

Pre-paid cash card

The prepaid card is far from a new idea. The concept is basically the same as a prepaid gift card or a mobile phone SIM card. A prepaid cash card looks like a credit or debit card, and gives users the ability to purchase products and services with a card but with a crucial difference which means a person can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility.

One can simply start using prepaid cash card when money has been loaded on to a prepaid card by cash at a bank, Post Office, at Payzone or PayPoint terminals, bank transfer, through your employer or even by credit card.

When using for purchasing at a high street store, they work in exactly the same way as a credit or debit card. When purchasing just simply hand over the card and then you will be asked to enter your PIN number (supplied with the card) on an electronic keypad or to sign a payment slip so your signature can be matched with that on the back of the card (if there is no Chip on the card). The total amount will be taken from your card immediately and the transaction is complete.

To shop online, you'll find the item you want to buy and click on to the website's "checkout" page before filling in your details and those of your prepaid card. As long as you have enough cash loaded on your card, the purchase is completed and your item will be shipped to you.



Application of pre-paid cash card for consumers



  • Buying groceries and petrol


  • As a replacement for travellers cheques or travel cash for a low cost alternative to paying for goods and services abroad


  • Topping up your mobile phone


  • Internet shopping including eBay


  • Paying bills


  • Transferring money to friends and family either in the UK or overseas (known as remittance)


  • Withdrawing cash from an ATM


  • People who wish to use foreign currency on a holiday


  • Newly arrived immigrant, who although earning, cannot yet obtain credit due to having no credit footprint in the UK


  • A person who has a poor credit rating or a history of bad debt who cannot get a credit card


  • Parent of a young person travelling abroad.

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Electronic Currency (E-Money)  

Posted by Bob

Electronic Currency
also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic money, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

While electronic money has been an interesting problem for cryptography, to date, use of digital cash has been relatively low-scale. One rare success has been Hong Kong's Octopus card system, which started as a transit payment system and has grown into a widely used electronic cash system. Singapore also has an electronic money implementation for its public transportation system (commuter trains, bus, etc), which is very similar to Hong Kong's Octopus card and based on the same type of card (FeliCa). A very successful implementation is in the Netherlands, known as Chipknip.

Characteristics of E-Currency
All types of money which people deal with it electronically, far from traditional ways of payment like banks, cheques, paper money and coins, e-currency allow users through internet or wireless devices to pay the charges of their purchases directly from their bank accounts by electronical ways such as Smart cards, Digital wallets and micropayments.


Despite the somewhat confusing diversity of proposals that seem to offer quite different solutions, all electronic money schemes share a common basis of issues that they somehow have to address. Based on Lynch; Lundquist (1996), Matonis (1995) and Okamoto; Ohta (1991) six problem areas can be defined that have to be addressed by any system:

Independence:
Is the electronic money independent of any physical condition? It has to be transferable though open networks and storable on different devices and in different locations inside and outside these networks. Cash, evidently, is dependent on its physical condition in so far as it equates the unit-value of money with the storage medium (paper, coins) in which it resides. It can not be transferred onto any other medium without ceasing to be cash. On the other hand, the cash economy is a truly open network which all forms of physical money can enter and exit quite freely. Even though the limits of the acceptance of specific cash clearly define different segments within the network , e.g. CDN$ are accepted inside Canada only, changing from one segment into the other is not only unproblematic but an essential, institutionalized feature of the network itself (currency exchange
Can it be copied (reused) and forged? This, obviously, must be prevented. Not only must the elnge).

Security:
ectronic money software be secure but also all the communication between the partners of a transaction must not be interceptible. Cash solves this problem based on its physical properties. A bill can be in only one place at any given time, therefore the question whether is has been duplicated can be decided locally, based on the thing. The transfer of cash is done normally in the presence of both parties and therefore unproblematic.

Privacy:
What kinds of transactional information are generated and who has access to them? All levels of privacy are technically possible. Privacy is related to the encryption technology used in the security features of the system, however, there is no correlation between the two

Transferability:
Who can pay and who can receive money? The cash must be transferable between users in all forms of "peer-to-peer payment". With cash this is no problem while with traditional credit cards this is impossible unless the payee has the privileged merchant status that is not intended to be available for everyone.
Divisibility:
What are the payment units? The size of the units and the number of different units has to be defined. In contrast to cash, where the physical properties limit not only the size but also the number of units due to reasons of practicality, these constraints do not apply to electronic money. All sizes of units are, technically speaking, equal. The limits arise due to specific design properties.

Ease of use:
What hardware, software and expertise is required? Electronic money has to be easy to use since the systems aim, at least theoretically, at the totality of the population addressing all kinds of individual expertise.

There are two different types of approaches to electronic money: on-line and off-line electronic money.

On-Line

On-line means there is a need to interact with a bank or another "trusted third party" (via modem or network) to conduct a transaction. On-line systems prevent fraud by requiring merchants to contact the bank's computer with every sale. The bank's computer maintains a database that can indicate to the merchant if a given piece of electronic money is still valid. This is similar to the way merchants currently verify credit cards at the point of sale.

Off-line
Off-line means that a transaction can be conducted without having to involve a bank directly. Off-line electronic money systems prevent fraud in basically two different ways. There is a hardware and a software approach. The hardware approach relies on some kind of a tamper-proof chip in a smart card that keeps a mini database. The software approach is to structure the electronic money and cryptographic protocols to reveal the identity of the double spender by the time the piece of e-money makes it back to the bank. If users of the off-line electronic money know they will get caught, the incidence of double spending will be minimized, at least in the theory.

On-line or off-line, those six characteristics( independence, security, privacy, transferability, divisibility, and ease of use) define the problem space that each electronic money system promoter attempts to solve for one goal: public acceptance wide enough to make the system profitable for those who run it.

Alternative systems
Technically electronic or digital money is a representation, or a system of debits and credits, used (but not limited to this) to exchange value, within another system, or itself as a stand alone system, online or offline. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. A private currency may use gold to provide extra security, such as digital gold currency. An e-currency system may be fully backed by gold (like e-gold and c-gold), non-gold backed, or both gold and non-gold backed (like e-Bullion and Liberty Reserve). Also, some private organizations, such as the US military use private currencies such as Eagle Cash.

Many systems will sell their electronic currency directly to the end user, such as Paypal and WebMoney, but other systems, such as e-gold, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

In the case of Octopus Card in Hong Kong, deposits work similarly to banks'. After Octopus Card Limited receives money for deposit from users, the money is deposited into banks, which is similar to debit-card-issuing banks redepositing money at central banks.

Some community currencies, like some LETS systems, work with electronic transactions. Cyclos Software allows creation of electronic community currencies.

Ripple monetary system is a project to develop a distributed system of electronic money independent of local currency.

Example Of E-Currency : PayPal

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It is also a European bank based in Luxembourg. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges a fee. It sometimes also charges a transaction fee for receiving money (a percentage of the amount sent plus an additional fixed amount). The fees charged depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type[citation needed].


On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India, Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany.


Issue: What is the double-spending problem?

Since e-money is just a bunch of bits, a piece of e-money is very easy to duplicate. Since the copy is indistinguishable from the original you might think that counterfeiting would be impossible to detect. A trivial e-money system would allow to copy of a piece of e-money and spend both copies. It is possible to become the millionaire in a matter of a few minutes. Obviously, real e-money systems must be able to prevent or detect double spending. Online e-money systems prevent double spending by requiring merchants to contact the bank's computer with every sale. The bank computer maintains a database of all the spent pieces of e-money and can easily indicate to the merchant if a given piece of e-money is still spendable. If the bank computer says the e-money has already been spent, the merchant refuses the sale. This is very similar to the way merchants currently verify credit cards at the point of sale.


Links of e-Currency


Paypal


G-cash (phillipine's Mobile Cash Solution)

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