Short Notes on E-commerce

The idea of electronic commerce started in the early 1970s. During this time, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). This technology allows businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.
 

The use of ICT has enabled innovations in the world of business by introducing the concept of electronic commerce or e-commerce. E-Commerce (EC) is the process of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging products or services via computer network.
 

The second of generation of e-commerce was introduced in the 1980s with the acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking. The current concept of e-commerce started around 1998. When the world wide web (www) and Internet computing was introduced in the early 1990s, many people were expecting that e-commerce would soon become one of the most important applications of www.

E-commerce can involve various parties, thus we have a number of different EC transactions, such as:

Business to Business Transactions (B2B);

Business to Cusomers Transactions(B2C);

Customers to Customers Transactions(C2C); and

Customers to Business Transactions(C2B). 
(CMA DECEMBER – 2012 EXAMINATION)