Electronic Commerce (1 Viewer)

[tooheyz]

hey everyone...

i've just got an assesment today (another one!) and its on electronic commerce. there's alot of stuff on the net, but half of it is pretty useless to me anyway... so if u guys have any info on it, please let me know.. the Heinmann text book isnt much of a help...

its just a simple written report on electronic commerce. have to describe the info processes involved, the social and ethical issues and processes use of information systems...

thanks guys

 

[del]

hmm well i guess describe the processes of how data is transmitted from the client to the payment gateway which processes the transaction then credits the merchant bank account (assuming its a payment or sale)...

the process involved may include fraud checking of credit cards, but this depends whether the payment gateway supports it. Also talk about the process of encryption and SSL to protect data, updating the database etc etc

might want to talk about transactional rollbacks both as a process and when talking about social and ethical issues

 

[professor]

or u can...base it on the communication topic and data base...let say data safety, network and all the other stuff...use a flow chart to show how the transaction is made...

 

[tooheyz]

well, i've spent the last 2 nights looking for information, and i found alot of stuff... what is is, popularity, the elements, y its popluar and its effects (soical and ethical issues).

but i cant find the processes which take place.. i have a raw idea in my head, but im not certain... i'm gonna write a paragraph of what processes take place, and then do a flow chart as a summary...

but does anyone acutally have info on the exact processes taken?

thanks it would b a big help!

 

[del]

hmm a semi rough idea (doing some research on ecommerce at the moment for work)... don't know if my explanation will make sense though, ecommerce is confusing at times

- customer goes to website... selects goods... then it comes to transaction.. user enters data into relevant fields, hits process order/or the equiv
- a secure socket is opened to the payment gateway to allow data to be transmitted securely (there still is a risk though) and data is still encrypted using 128 bit encryption...
- at the payment gateway the details are processed... using the details received the payment gateway may check to ensure the card is valid, if it is not, it will return an error code informing so. If the card is okay, the transaction will be processed and the total of the purchase credited to the merchant account of the company. This would involve communicating/querying each banks respective databases and using SQL to credit the amount to the merchant account, and debit the credit (or rather add to the amount due on the card)... on top of this, as most payment gateways provide a facility in which company's can check the history of transactions over the internet, so it too would update a database of its own, with things such as the time, date, amount etc etc. The process of doing this step can range from a few seconds to 30 seconds...
- after the above step is successful a parameter (code) is returned back requesting web server informing that the transaction has been successful.
- at the end of the day/nite (sounds like a batch process to me)... the money in the merchant bank account, is transferred to the companys bank account of choice automatically.....

then theres also processes for 'refunding'

 

[tooheyz]

thanks del for that - i was thinking the same thing as well. i'm just going to incorportate yours and mine...
gonna go to the library today and hopefully they have some stuff on it (even though i doubt it). i was jsut doing the information system flow chat thing - with the purpose and participates etc. (im sure everyone who does ipt to know what i am talking about)
its looking alright now, ahahah before it was all empty!

well thanks again for your help and if you get any more info, could u plz let me know?

thanks a million!