By the year 2000, there will be an estimated $200 billion in transactions on-line. On-line transactions, on  the Net, will become an even more significant part in the future. 

Incorporating real-time secure encrypted transactions via Cybercash, " TheCyber.com" is striving to provide the best e-commerce solutions possible. 

What is E-Commerce? 

Most people think that e-commerce means online shopping--workaholics pointing their browsers to Amazon.com to order an emergency present because they forgot someone's birthday again. 

But Web shopping is only a small part of the e-commerce picture. The term also refers to online stock and bond transactions and buying and downloading software without ever going near a store. In addition, e-commerce includes business-to-business connections that make purchasing easier for big corporations. And many people hope that so-called microtransactions will let people pay small amounts, a few cents or a few dollars to access online content or games. 
 
 

That depends on how you crunch the numbers. According to ActivMedia, less than a third of online merchants are actually making a profit from their sites. On the other hand, studies show that most Internet users read up on a product online and then buy it elsewhere. So, even if a Web site isn't generating many online sales, it could still be contributing to sales via other channels. 

As for companies focusing on business-to-business e-commerce, they're not out to turn a profit so much as they're trying to cut expenses and improve customer service. 

The consumer side of the market is still immature: sex sites make up about a tenth of all retail business done online, according to Forrester Research. But those sites are not alone. Computer companies such as Dell and Gateway 2000 claim that as much as 10 percent of their sales are made over the Internet. 

Having a recognizable brand name helps. Less than a year after its launch, iQVC claims to be profitable, ringing up more than $1million in sales per month. Research by The NPD Group says that iQVC garners 1 percent of all Web traffic, the broadest reach of any online merchant. 

TheCyber.com, provides real-time online transaction processing. 

I.E. site visitors can pay online in real time, using their Visa, Master or American Express Card. All payments are instantly verified and authorized! Monies are deposited to your bank account. 

Let us generate your online shopping mall or Membership site. Real - time verification and authorization of VISA / MasterCard / Amex online! 

But profitability requires more than making sales: sites must also control expenses. Apart from the cost of developing e-commerce software to track the 100,000 items it sells online, iQVC's expenses have been low. The online subsidiary shares the ordering systems developed for its cable parent and hasn't had to do much marketing or advertising. Other e-commerce ventures are saddled with huge costs for building traffic and establishing a brand name. Virtual bookseller Amazon.com, the poster child for e-commerce, lost $6.7 million for the quarter ending June 30, 1997. And that's despite sales soaring to $27.9 million, up from $2.2 million in the same quarter last year. 
 

Is E-Commerce safe for Merchants?

In early July, someone somehow obtained company passwords and sent email messages to hundreds of customers who had made purchases at the popular ESPN SportsZone and NBA.com sites, both run by Starwave. The intruder told victims that their credit card numbers had been stolen from the company's computers, and he or she included the last several digits as proof. 

The incident proves that nobody is really safe online. But while Internet security breaches like these have gotten a lot of press, most vendors and analysts argue that transactions are actually less dangerous in cyberspace than in the physical world. 

That's because a great deal of credit card fraud is caused by retail sales employees who handle card numbers. E-commerce systems remove temptation by encrypting the numbers on a company's servers. For merchants, e-commerce is actually safer than opening a store that could be looted, burned, or flooded. The difficulty is in getting customers to believe that e-commerce is safe for them.
 

Terms of Business:

Certification Authority (CA):
A secure third party organization that can verify the identity and origin of a person or component (example would be active Xcontrols) Verisign (http://verisign.com) is the leading CA at present.

Cybercash:
An electronic payment system used to verify Credit Cards and it supports the processing of payments over the net (http://www.cybercash.com)

Digital signatures:
Authentication is the big challenge on the Net!! Digital signatures are electronically coded messages that accompany text messages, identifying the author of each document or component.

Electronic Wallet:
Called the Virtual Wallet. Software which allows commerce server user to store and use Credit Card information over the Net. All information is encrypted.

Joint Electronic Payment Initiative (JEPI):
An attempt to set a standard. Proposed by the Net commerce and W3 Consortium. Focus here is data security.

Secure Electronic Transaction (SET):
Official since August. A standard protocol agreed on by VISA and Master Card. Emphasis again is security, denying the merchant access to the Credit card information. Funds go directly to the Bank.

Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP): Secure version of HTTP, developed by Netscape.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL):
A public security protocol, also developed by Netscape. The little key (left bottom corner on Netscape or lock on menu bar with Microsoft). To obtain the Secure Socket Layer one must apply for a Secure Certificate with Verisign (http://www.verisign.com)