The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers.

Since is it almost necessary these days to pay for so many things with a credit card, it might make acquiring items and services through the internet or when you are not close to home hard when you do not have one. A debit card can be used similarly and are acknowledged the same places as credit cards, but you will have to have cash in your checking account to pay for the purchases that you make at the moment you scan the debit card.

The usefulness of a debit card may not be obvious at first, but when you use it to buy car fuel or other items and you realize that the money it cost is not going to come due with interest on your next credit card statement, and then you will experience a new feeling of power, the power of no debt.

It is certainly possible to keep yourself from purchasing things with the interest accumulating credit card and become more comfortable knowing you are getting along without going into dangerous debt.
Once you discover that it is smarter to pay as you go, and then you might discover that it is actually easier to save back a portion of the money you have been paying on credit card interest.

Financial advisers may suggest to you that if there is any interest money going someplace, it should be interest you are receiving from your money saved and not interest you pay others because of money you have already spent.

Visa plans to offer customers a prepaid cash card allowing travelers access to money at automated teller machines in 65 countries.

The VIP Visa prepaid cash card can pay the customers bills over the phone, low cost fees and that is online and offline access. Unlike traditional credit cards, the Visa® Prepaid Cash Card does not extend you credit. Instead, accounts are prepaid for a specific amount while still being backed by Visa® for universal acceptance. There is no line of credit and accounts are only good for the balance applied

According to data on online payment methods adopted for online train ticket booking, the share of cash cards has been steadily increasing over the last one year, while the share of credit cards has been slowly declining. From the total 16.27 lakh tickets booked online in September 2007, 22 per cent online payments were made using cash cards, according to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) data.

Electronic Currency

In this century, many transactions are though by electronic currency. Electronic currency is most popular in the consumer mind, because electronic currency is easier acceptance by the consumer. 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 and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

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 standalone 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 Web Money, but other systems, such as e-gold, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

In conclusion, with using electronic currency, it make our life became easy and not need have to keep a lot of money in the purse.

Credit Card Debts: Cause and Prevention

WHAT IS A CREDIT CARD?
Any card that may be used repeatedly to borrow money or buy products and services on credit. A credit card, such as VISA or MasterCard, allows you to pay for sales or services by borrowing against your line of credit with the credit card company and to make monthly payments on the outstanding balance. A charge card, such as American Express requires payment in full each month of the outstanding balance charged to the account.

Cause credit card debt
Poor money management : Do we really know where our money is going? Without money spending plan, you have no idea where your money is going. You may be spending unnecessarily each month.

Financial illiteracy - Many people don't understand how money works and grows, how to save and invest for a rainy day, or even why they should balance their checkbook.

Reduced or lost of income: A divorce, death of spouse or unemployment may cause a serious debts. If there is a huge gap between income and expenses, the easiest way to fill in the gap
with credit card debt.

Prevention method
Cut Up Your Cards
The best way to reduce credit card debt is to STOP using credit cards! There is no need to have more than one card, so pick the one with the lowest interest rate and cut up the rest. The one you keep should be deemed an “emergency card”. These are true emergencies, not mere inconveniences

Apply debit cards
Debit cards look like credit cards, but operate like cash or a personal check. While a credit card is a way to "pay later," a debit card is a way to "pay now." When you use a debit card, your money is quickly deducted from your checking or savings account. Therefore, you won get debt because over expense.

Control expense
create a budget and stick to it. A clear budget that includes all of your monthly bills, food, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses will prevent you from spending thoughtlessly and buying without thinking twice.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blog is published and used by an organization to reach its organization goals.

According Wikipedia, there have three types of corporate blogs that is external blog, internal blog and CEO Blog. Internal blog is a weblog that any employee can view, it encourage employee participation, free discussion of issues, direct communication between various layers of organization and is a sense of community.

Examples of Internal Blog Applications
Purpose	Blogger	Tone
Corporate level communication	CEO, CIO, CFO, President	Formal
Project or contract level communication	Group/project leaders, department heads	Formal
Industry news and discussion	Individual employees	Formal or casual
Water cooler content	Individual employees	Informal and casual

External blogs is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokesperson share their view, and it often used to announce new products or new services, to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issue. It is very useful in company marketing communication, the marketer can asking the user for feedback, doing product testing or shows marketing plans to the customer through the blog.

The goals of an organization to start corporate blog are following:

·         Driving Sales - directly promoting products and services - for example announcing new products.

·         Public Relations - management of crisis situations, promoting company vision and developments etc

·         Customer Relations - fostering customer loyalty, building relationships with clients and customers etc

·         Research and Development - garnering feedback and suggestions from clients

·         Information and Education - giving customers information on how to use products

·         Internal Communications - password protected blogs for staff - for training, communications, work-shopping ideas etc

·         Community Development - developing client community around a product.

 

That is the reason of why we say corporate blog is a new marketing communication tool for companies. A successful corporate blog is allow companies to present accurate information without the filter of the media or advertising, provide some marketing information to the customer such as direction of how to use the product or what is the latest product of the company.

Marketing Nirvana has ranked the top 15 corporate blogs. Besides that, Debbieweil also summary the 8 tips for corporate blog in 2008:

1.      Use humor

2.      Write short. Less is more

3.      Post at least once a week

4.      Link to naysayers and competitors

5.      Appoint a blog editor

6.      Build redundancy into your approval process

7.      Consider joining the newly-formed blog council

8.      Just do it

 

But the blogger also need to careful to maintain their corporate blog. The blog will face failure if the executive who is responsible to write the blog isn’t fully committed and passionate. Seomoz.org has summarized the reason why corporate blogging fails:

√         Blogs vs. Corporate culture

√         Editorial Control Issues

√         Unfamiliarity with a Blog’s Structure

√         Misunderstanding Your Audience

√         Crafting a Corporate Voice, Rather than a Personal One

√         Attempting to “Sell” or “Market”

√         Domain & URL Issues

Mobile payment system in Malaysia: Its potentials and comsumers' adoption strategies

Mobile Money is a PIN-based Mobile Payment Solution designed to address the limitations and bottlenecks created by cash, cheques and credit cards. It unlocks the power of the mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere using only a mobile phone coupled with a 6-digit security PIN (Personal Identification Number) via SMS (Short Messaging Service). This gives the freedom to shoppers to buy products online and pay the merchant using his/her mobile phone without being physically present at the store.

In relation to the overall mobile operator ecosystem, the following diagram shows the main data flows and relationship between the SMS Payment Suite implemented within the mobile operator environment and the other components:

When it comes to online selling, selecting a payment gateway is one of the major obstacles faced by the merchants in Malaysia. Mobile Money will encourage more consumers to shop online. This will definitely be a great boon to the e-commerce industry in Malaysia. It will encourage the merchants in Malaysia to adopt more online business and get the extra sales channel.

There are many benefits to the merchants and attract them to adopt this system:

♠          Low transaction and maintenance costs

♠          Low startup or sign-up fees

♠          No minimum monthly transactions, No Rental Fees

♠          No merchants account required

♠          Selling to anyone, anywhere & anytime

♠          Gets paid fast and faster turnover in T+2 Days

♠          Flexible methods to Request for Payment

♠          Good audit trail and secure ticketing

♠          Marketing & points system opportunities using the Mobile Money SMS

 

The threat of online sercurity: how safe is our data?

In this century, e-commerce are very popular in the consumer behavior. From the Internet, we can learnt how to do the e-transaction and purchase from the net. However, the online security for the e-commerce we need to care about it.
The threat we will face in the Internet are, nontechnical attack, that is an attack that uses chicanery to trick people into revealing sensitive information or performing actions that compromise the security of a network. In additional, the social engineering also a type of nontechnical attack that uses social pressures to trick computer users into compromising computer networks to which those individuals have access.
The solution for us how to protects our data for the online security, we need to uses the security issues to help us to protect our data, such as Authentication, Authorization, Nonrepudiation, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability
From the authentication, we can see the process to verify the real identity of an individual, computer, computer program, or EC website. Therefore, the authorization are process of determining what the authenticated entity is allowed to access and what operations it is allowed to perform and for the nonrepudiation are assurance that online customers or trading partners cannot falsely deny their purchase or transaction. In additional, the major issues of confidentiality also to assurance of the data privacy and accuracy. Keeping Private or sensitive information from being disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities, or processes. Integrity also are assurance that stored data has not been modified without authorization and a message that was sent is the same message that was received and Availability also assurance that access to data, the Web site, or other EC data service is timely, available, reliable, and restricted to authorized users.
Finally, by using the security issues, that can help us to efficiency to protect our data during the online period and can help us to minimize the risk.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Internet users are frequently required to provide personal data online. If you start up a yahoo or hotmail account, register for an online banking service or buy your groceries online, you will be asked to provide personal information about yourself. Whenever you buy goods or services online, you also have to provide highly sensitive information. We cannot escape the fact that we need to give information to access online services.

The most fundamental guideline for protecting our own personal data is to only disclose personal information whenever it is absolutely required and where organizations or corporations offer clear guidelines to protect data privacy.

We should be extremely careful not to disclose personal information online in situations where there are no privacy protection guidelines (for example, posting personal information in a chat room or newsgroup). Avoid disclosing our own or others’ personal information such as email addresses, home addresses, job and company details in a public forum. Also, take care not to pass on others’ email addresses or details without their permission. Simply forwarding an email with others’ email addresses on it can compromise the data privacy of others and result in privacy intrusions such as unwanted messages or spam.

Consumer and privacy advocates are calling for legislation that authorizes any individual whose data was compromised to place a seven year fraud alert on our credit report. A fraud alert requires creditors to contact the consumer before issuing credit in our names. Currently a seven year alert is available only for consumers who are already identity theft victims. This is like getting a flu shot after we have contracted the flu. A longer than 90 day period for an early fraud alert would help to prevent identity theft.

Besides, we should have the right to place a free security freeze on our credit report. A security freeze would allow us to control the release of confidential data, and would allow us to lift the freeze on a selective basis, for example, when applying for a mortgage. Any individual who receives a notice of an unauthorized release of confidential data should be entitled to a security freeze at no cost. We should be able to establish a security freeze for preventive purposes at no cost.

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

What is ‘Phishing’?
Phishing is a broadly launched social engineering attack in which an electronic identity is misrepresented in an attempt to trick individual into revealing credentials. Phishing also is THEFT. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and often directs users to enter details at a website, although phone contact has also been used.
Phishing is a technique used to gain personal information for purposes of identity theft, using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate business. Therefore, these authentic-looking messages are designed to fool recipients into divulging personal data such as account number and passwords, credit card numbers.
PayPal phishing example




8 way prevention method
1) Only do the business with companies you know & trust.
2) Don replies the e-mail messages that request your personal information.
3) Use the strong password for each of your accounts.
4) Always change password to protect account.
5) Don’t click the thing links in suspicious e-mail, the link might dangerous and not be trustworthy.6) Frequently keep your PC updated & use latest antivirus software.
7) Monitor your transaction; using just one credit card for online purchases makes it easier to track your transactions.
8) Use credit cards for transactions on the internet instead of debit cards to avoid the big credit limit from your bank account

A Review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog

While the latest technology is available and the use of internet is popular now, the security of the internet has become an important issue that how to prevent the virus, worm and the hacker who try to access the data or the information from us. The threat of internet has given an impact on our freedom to use the internet, savetheinternet.com has provide an article about how does these threat to internet freedom affect us and who will be affected.

This is an E-commerce blog from e-commerce.blogspot that talking about same interesting topic on internet security: 

 

One of these blog is talking about the report of internet security and threat. According the latest Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), volume XIII (ISTR XIII), released on 8 April 2008, Kuala Lumpur had the most bot-infections in the APJ region in the last half of 2007, a significant rise from seventh rank in the first half of the year. (APJ Internet Security Threat Report):

The other finding of the report is following: 

♠    In 2007, Symantec detected 711,912 new threats compared to 125,243 in 2006 – a increase of 468 percent; this brings the total number of malicious code threats detected by Symantec to 1,122,311 as of the end of 2007.

♠   Symantec measured the release of both legitimate and malicious software during a portion of the reporting period and found that 65 percent of the 54,609 unique applications released to the public were categorized as malicious. This is the first time Symantec observed malicious software outpacing legitimate applications.

♠   Theft or loss of a computer or other device made up 57 percent of all data breaches during the last half of 2007 and accounted for 46 percent of all reported breaches in the previous reporting period.

♠   Government was the top industry sector for identities exposed, accounting for 60 percent of the total, an increase from 12 percent in the previous reporting period.

♠   A full identity can be purchased in the underground economy for as little as $1.

Adopted from PUTERA.com

Another interesting post I found in this blog is the case of JohnCow which is joke of Self-hacking own blog to get the message across about how important it is to get your blog backed up. 

It is necessary for us to prevent our data been hacked. This blog also provide some website talking about how to prevent our blog being hacked such as Blogging mix, seolog.com, Jonlee.ca. 

Beside these website that the blog has mention, I also found the others useful website that provide some information about the internet threat and security:

Security Manor: This website has post some latest issue about internet security such as the 6 most common internet security issues, how to preventing identity theft, how to protecting your privacy and security on the internet and how to keeping children safe on the internet.

support.Microsoft.com: How to recover from a computer virus infection and how to prevent future infections from computer viruses in Windows operating systems

wordsandpeople.com: What is spam and how to prevent it

Internet World Stats: How to prevent the online invasion of spyware and adware

Actually, if you type "how to prevent virus of internet" in google website, it will appear many website that provide the knowledge about it. Prevent is better than cure, but the most troublesome I think is the maker of these internet threat such as hacker or virus maker, why they so evil to lead our internet activities so unsafety??

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

Dell's Successful Use of the Internet as a Selling Channel

Michael Dell is the founder of Dell. He must be familiar to many young people, especially to those who are determined to go in for business. Born in 1965, this wizard boy is able to turn himself into a multibillion-dollar tycoon in a matter of a few years. Dell’s success story begins with a brilliant idea. This idea may seem like commonsense today, but Dell is the first to hit upon that idea. This is the first secret of his success: to be the first. Success usually belongs to the person who dares to be the first, to be creative and original, and Dell is always bursting with new ideas. Another thing is his ambition. Dell is highly motivated.

Dell is currently the world’s number one PC supplier, a position in the market they took from Compaq in April 2001. In short, the company’s success story is mainly down to their innovative direct business model, which pays particular attention to the selling process where Dell completely bypasses all intermediaries and/or middlemen. This is because Michael Dell believed they add little if no value to the end product, instead just gaining a considerable mark-up for
selling the product.

Hence, they became the first PC manufacturer to completely cut out retailers and instead sold customized computers directly to customers based on their exact specifications. This selling process began over the telephone and via catalogues but in 1996 Dell embarked on Internet based selling on their official website, Dell.com, providing customers the opportunity to buy desktops, notebooks and servers directly from them.

In order to power online commerce successfully for any business, the basic technology required is the installation of servers and data-storage systems. The website Dell.com runs on industry standard Dell Power Edge servers. These powerful servers are backed up by Dell/EMC Fibre Channel storage.

Dell is the world's leading computer systems company. They design, build and customize products and services to satisfy a range of customer requirements. Dell is an example of an E-commerce success.

Discuss how E-commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

E-commerce can shorten the time it takes for a business to complete a productive activity from its beginning to end. It reduce the cycle time by expedite the various steps in the process of product or service development, testing and implementation or eliminating steps in business process and replaced with more efficient technology solution. The elimination of the steps speeds the overall process and reduces cycle time. For example, Dell used e-procurement for improving the purchasing the component, collaborative commerce with its partners.

Beside that, E-commerce has reduced the intermediaries and sells the product or service to end-user directly. The customer can order anytime through the website and the company can respond immediately to the order. The product is deliver to the end-user from the manufacturer not retailer can fasten the delivery cycle time. For example, dell computer sell the computer to the end-user directly without intermediaries.

E-commerce also improves the empowerment of employees by giving employees the authority to act and make decision. EC provides employees with greater and easier access to information provided by the employer to make better decision making. The employee can work at home and cut down the travelling, deal with the customer complaint and can receive the feedback from the customer through internet.

EC facilitates customer support by providing a wide range of technological solutions and communication opportunities. EC provide the information at their website so the customer can search the answer or information that they want. The customers can online shopping anytime and any place without limited by operating hours of store. They also can compare the price with different supplier. Nowadays, many company use E-CRM to facilitate their customer support. For example, alibaba.com provides E-CRM at their website that can receive the feedback of the customer.