01. What do you mean by E-Commerce?

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the

buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet
and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown
extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted
in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply
chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data
interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection
systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at
some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of
technologies such as e-mail as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual

items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce
involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes
known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers
have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as Business-to-

business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or
limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market).

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also

consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the
business transactions.

History of E-Commerce

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally,
electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically,
using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds
Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to
send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth
and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking
in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was
the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK.
Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 and during the 1980s it was used
extensively particularly by auto manufacturers such as Ford,Peugeot-Talbot, General
Motors and Nissan. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally
include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not.The earliest
example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston
Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. The first online
information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American
Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.

Although the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, it took about five years to
introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. And
by the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their
services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word
"ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using
secure protocols and electronic payment services.

Business Application

Some common applications related to electronic commerce are the following:

• E-mail and messaging

• Content Management Systems
• Documents, spreadsheets, database
• Accounting and finance systems
• Orders and shipment information
• Enterprise and client information reporting
• Domestic and international payment systems
• Newsgroup
• On-line Shopping
• Messaging
• Conferencing

02. How can you make e-payment secure?

While it is possible to take and transmit credit card information on non-secure WWW
pages or via e-mail, this is not very safe and most buyers are hesitant to do this. The
current versions of the popular WWW browsers in use today are able to identify access to
a secure WWW server (such as one that supports the Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
protocol), switch to a special secure mode and notify the user that any information they
transmit from that page will be securely encrypted. Major credit card companies now
accept that transmitting your credit card number from a secure page is safe and fully
support their use.

03. What is online banking? Describe online banking.

Online banking (or Internet banking) allows customers to conduct financial transactions
on a secure website operated by their retail or virtual bank, credit union or building
society.
Features

Online banking solutions have many features and capabilities in common, but
traditionally also have some that are application specific.

The common features fall broadly into several categories

• Transactional (e.g., performing a financial transaction such as an account to

account transfer, paying a bill, wire transfer... and applications... apply for a loan,
new account, etc.)
o Electronic bill presentment and payment - EBPP
o Funds transfer between a customer's own checking and savings accounts,
or to another customer's account
o Investment purchase or sale
o Loan applications and transactions, such as repayments

• Non-transactional (e.g., online statements, check links, cobrowsing, chat)

o Bank statements
• Financial Institution Administration - features allowing the financial institution to
manage the online experience of their end users
• ASP/Hosting Administration - features allowing the hosting company to
administer the solution across financial institutions

Online Banking security

Protection through single password authentication, as is the case in most secure Internet
shopping sites, is not considered secure enough for personal online banking applications
in some countries. Basically there exist two different security methods for online
banking.

• The PIN/TAN system where the PIN represents a password, used for the login
and TANs representing one-time passwords to authenticate transactions. TANs
can be distributed in different ways, the most popular one is to send a list of
TANs to the online banking user by postal letter. The most secure way of using
TANs is to generate them by need using a security token. These token generated
TANs depend on the time and a unique secret, stored in the security token (this is
called two-factor authentication or 2FA). Usually online banking with PIN/TAN
is done via a web browser using SSL secured connections, so that there is no
additional encryption needed.
• Signature based online banking where all transactions are signed and encrypted
digitally. The Keys for the signature generation and encryption can be stored on
smartcards or any memory medium, depending on the concrete implementation.
Attacks

Most of the attacks on online banking used today are based on deceiving the user to steal
login data and valid TANs. Two well known examples for those attacks are phishing and
pharming. Cross-site scripting and keylogger/Trojan horses can also be used to steal login
information.

A method to attack signature based online banking methods is to manipulate the used
software in a way, that correct transactions are shown on the screen and faked
transactions are signed in the background.

A recent FDIC Technology Incident Report, compiled from suspicious activity reports
banks file quarterly, lists 536 cases of computer intrusion, with an average loss per
incident of $30,000. That adds up to a nearly $16-million loss in the second quarter of
2007. Computer intrusions increased by 150 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and
the second. In 80 percent of the cases, the source of the intrusion is unknown but it
occurred during online banking, the report states.[4]

Countermeasures

There exist several countermeasures which try to avoid attacks. Digital certificates are
used against phishing and pharming, the use of class-3 card readers is a measure to avoid
manipulation of transactions by the software in signature based online banking variants.
To protect their systems against Trojan horses, users should use virus scanners and be
careful with downloaded software or e-mail attachments.

04. Write different types of card used in e-commerce?

One of the main requirements in e-commerce is the ability to accept a form of electronic
payment. This form of electronic payment is referred to as financial electronic data
interchange (FEDI). FEDI has become increasingly popular over the last number of years
due to the widespread use of the internet based shopping and banking.

Credit cards and Smart cards

Over the years, credit cards have become one of the most common forms of payment for
e-commerce transactions. In the early years of B2C, many consumers were apprehensive
of using their credit cards over the internet because of fear that their credit card numbers
would get stolen. However, due to increased security with credit card companies such as
VISA, American Express, and MasterCard there is widespread use of credit card use over
the internet, especially in North America.

Despite this widespread use in North America, there are still a number of countries such
as China, India and Pakistan that have some problems to overcome in regard to credit
card security. In the meantime, the use of smartcards has become extremely popular. A
Smartcard is similar to a credit card; however it contains an embedded 8-bit
microprocessor and uses electronic cash which transfers from the consumers’ card to the
sellers’ device. A popular smartcard initiative is the VISA Smartcard. Using the VISA
Smartcard you can transfer electronic cash to your card from your bank account, and you
can then use your card at various retailers and on the internet.

Financial Cyber-mediaries

These are companies that enable financial transactions to transpire over the internet.
Types of transactions include: C2C, C2B, and/or B2B. One of the best known and most
successful financial cybermediaries is PayPal. This free online service allows consumers
and/or businesses to send money to anyone with an email address in 45 countries. PayPal
is accepted by thousands of businesses worldwide and is the preferred payment method
on eBay.com. PayPal is now owned by ebay.com.

Many of the mediaries permit consumers to establish an account quickly, and to transfer
funds into their online accounts from a traditional bank account (typically via ACH
transactions), and vice versa, after verification of the consumer's identity and authority to
access such bank accounts. Also, the larger mediaries further allow transactions to and
from credit card accounts, although such credit card transactions are usually assessed a
fee (either to the recipient or the sender) to recoup the transaction fees charged to the
mediary.

The speed and simplicity with which cyber-mediary accounts can be established and used
have contributed to their widespread use, although the risk of abuse, theft and other
problems—with disgruntled users frequently accusing the mediaries themselves of
wrongful behavior—is associated with them.

Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment

Electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) is a fairly new technique that allows
consumers to view and pay bills electronically. There are a significant number of bills
that consumers pay on a regular basis, which include: power bills, water, oil, internet,
phone service, mortgages, car payments etc. EBPP systems send bills from service
providers to individual consumers via the internet. The systems also enable payments to
be made by consumers, given that the amount that appears on the e-bill is correct. Banks
in Canada have been offering these online payment services for some time now, and are
growing in popularity. Other service providers such as Rogers Communications and
Aliant accept major credit cards within the bill payment sections of their websites. This
service is in addition to the original EBPP method of a direct withdrawal from a bank
account through a bank such as Scotiabank.

The biggest difference between EBPP systems and the traditional method of bill
payment, is that of technology. Rather than receiving a bill through the mail, writing out
and sending a check, consumers receive their bills in an email, or are prompted to visit a
website to view and pay their bills.

Three broad models of EBPP have emerged. These are:

1. Consolidation, where numerous bills for any one recipient are made available at
one Web site, most commonly the recipient's bank. In some countries, such as
Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the postal service also operates a
consolidation service. The actual task of consolidation is sometimes performed by
a third party, and fed to the Web sites where consumers receive the bills. The
principal attraction of consolidation is that consumers can receive and pay
numerous bills at the one location, thus minimising the number of login IDs and
passwords they must remember and maintain.
2. Biller Direct, where the bills produced by an organisation are made available
through that organisation's Web site. This model works well if the recipient has
reasons to visit the biller's Web site other than to receive their bills. In the freight
industry, for example, customers will visit a carrier's Web site to track items in
transit, so it is reasonably convenient to receive and pay freight bills at the same
site.
3. Direct email delivery, where the bills are emailed to the customer's In Box. This
model most closely imitates the analog postal service. It is convenient, because
almost everyone has email and the customer has to do nothing except use email in
order to receive a bill. Email delivery is proving especially popular in the B2B
market in many countries.

Major providers of outsourced bill production services have developed facilities to

process bills through consolidation, biller direct and email delivery services, thus
enabling major billers to have all their bills, paper and electronic, processed through the
one service. Niche service providers in many countries provide one or two of these
models, but generally do not integrate with paper bill production.

Online Payment Systems Directory

OnlinePaySystems Its a directory of on-line payments systems. There you can find
information about different systems, rate them, review, comment and discuss in the
forum. There is attempt to implement the best trend technologies to get the best result.
The project will be always under development and we going to improve it further based
as well on our own ideas as on visitors suggestions.
05. Describe briefly the online shopping and advertisement.

Online Shopping

Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services

over the Internet. An online shop, eshop, e-store, internet shop, webshop, webstore,
online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at
a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs. All
types of stores have retail web sites, including those that do and do not also have physical
storefronts and paper catalogs.

Online shopping is a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B)

and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.

The term "Webshop" also refers to a place of business where web development, web
hosting and other types of web related activities take place (Web refers to the World
Wide Web and "shop" has a colloquial meaning used to describe the place where one's
occupation is carried out).

Online Advertisement

Online advertising is a form of advertising that uses the Internet and World Wide Web in
order to deliver marketing messages and attract customers. Examples of online
advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, Rich Media
Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and
e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

A major result of online advertising is information and content that is not limited by
geography or time. The emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges
for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy.

Online video directories for brands are a good example of interactive advertising. These
directories complement television advertising and allow the viewer to view the
commercials of a number of brands. If the advertiser has opted for a response feature, the
viewer may then choose to visit the brand’s website, or interact with the advertiser
through other touch points such as email, chat or phone. Response to brand
communication is instantaneous, and conversion to business is very high. This is because
in contrast to conventional forms of interruptive advertising, the viewer has actually
chosen to see the commercial.
06. What do you mean by E-governance? What are the effects of E-governance in
respect of Bangladesh?

e-Government (from electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government,

online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to the
use of internet technology as a platform for exchanging information, providing services
and transacting with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. e-Government
may be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve
internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic
governance. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-
Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government
(G2G) & Government-to-Employees (G2E).
Within each of these interaction domains, four kind of activities take place pushing
information over the Internet, e.g: regulatory services, general holidays, public hearing
schedules, issue briefs, notifications, etc.

• two-way communications between the agency and the citizen, a business, or

another government agency. In this model, users can engage in dialogue with
agencies and post problems, comments, or requests to the agency.
• conducting transactions, e.g: lodging tax returns, applying for services and grants.
• governance, e.g: online polling, voting, and campaigning.

The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include more efficiency,

improved services, better accessibility of public services, and more transparency and
accountability.

While e-government is often thought of as "online government" or "Internet-based

government," many non-Internet "electronic government" technologies can be used in
this context. Some non-internet forms include telephone, fax, PDA, SMS text messaging,
MMS, wireless networks and services, Bluetooth, CCTV, tracking systems, RFID,
biometric identification, road traffic management and regulatory enforcement, identity
cards, smart cards and other NFC applications; polling station technology (where non-
online e-voting is being considered), TV and radio-based delivery of government
services, email, online community facilities, newsgroups and electronic mailing lists,
online chat, and instant messaging technologies. There are also some technology-specific
sub-categories of e-government, such as m-government (mobile government), u-
government (ubiquitous government), and g-government (GIS/GPS applications for e-
government).

There are many considerations and potential implications of implementing and designing
e-government, including disintermediation of the government and its citizens, impacts on
economic, social, and political factors, and disturbances to the status quo in these areas.

In countries such as the United Kingdom, there is interest in using electronic government
to re-engage citizens with the political process. In particular, this has taken the form of
experiments with electronic voting, aiming to increase voter turnout by making voting
easy. The UK Electoral Commission has undertaken several pilots, though concern has
been expressed about the potential for fraud with some electronic voting methods.

07. Write Short note on

i) ATM
ii) Debit Card
iii) Smart Card
iv) E-cash

ATM

An automated teller machine (ATM) is a computerized telecommunications device that

provides the customers of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a
public space without the need for a human clerk or bank teller. On most modern ATMs,
the customer is identified by inserting a plastic ATM card with a magnetic stripe or a
plastic smartcard with a chip, that contains a unique card number and some security
information, such as an expiration date or CVC (CVV). Security is provided by the
customer entering a personal identification number (PIN). They are sometimes referred to
as "ATM machines", an example of RAS Syndrome.

Using an ATM, customers can access their bank accounts in order to make cash
withdrawals (or credit card cash advances) and check their account balances as well as
purchasing mobile cell phone prepaid credit. ATMs are known by various casual terms
including automated banking machine, money machine, bank machine, cash machine,
hole-in-the-wall, cashpoint, Bancomat (in various countries in Europe and Russia),
Multibanco (after a registered trade mark, in Portugal), and Any Time Money (in India).

Debit Card

A debit card is a plastic card which provides an alternative payment method to cash
when making purchases. Physically the card is an ISO 7810 card like a credit card;
however, its functionality is more similar to writing a check as the funds are withdrawn
directly from either the cardholder's bank account (often referred to as a check card), or
from the remaining balance on a gift card.

Depending on the store or merchant, the customer may swipe or insert their card into the
terminal, or they may hand it to the merchant who will do so. The transaction is
authorized and processed and the customer verifies the transaction either by entering a
PIN or, occasionally, by signing a sales receipt.
In some countries the debit card is multipurpose, acting as the ATM card for withdrawing
cash and as a check guarantee card. Merchants can also offer "cashback"/"cashout"
facilities to customers, where a customer can withdraw cash along with their purchase.

The use of debit cards has become wide-spread in many countries and has overtaken the
check, and in some instances cash transactions by volume. Like credit cards, debit cards
are used widely for telephone and Internet purchases. This [citation needed] may cause
inconvenient delays at peak shopping times (e.g. the last shopping day before Christmas),
caused when the volume of transactions overloads the bank networks.

Smart Card

A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC), is any pocket-sized card
with embedded integrated circuits which can process data. This implies that it can receive
input which is processed — by way of the ICC applications — and delivered as an
output. There are two broad categories of ICCs. Memory cards contain only non-volatile
memory storage components, and perhaps some specific security logic. Microprocessor
cards contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made of
plastic, generally PVC, but sometimes ABS. The card may embed a hologram to avoid
counterfeiting. Using smartcards also is a form of strong security authentication for single
sign-on within large companies and organizations.

E-cash

Electronic money (also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency,

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 (see for
example the work of David Chaum and Markus Jakobsson), 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.