[thelist] eCommerce

[Jonathan Karlen]

Everything there is to know, eh?  Wow, that's ambitious.

The financial aspects of your question are really fairly straight
forward.  There isn't really a whole heck of a lot of difference between
what happens when you use your credit card at a store and when you key
it into a web site's checkout page.  In both instances the credit card
number and other details (expiration date, CID code, zip code, etc.) are
transferred to a credit card processor.  All transactions get pooled
into a fairly small number of processing centers (the largest of which,
I believe, is Nashville) and a result is returned.  In a store the
result is returned to the credit card terminal and it is preprogrammed
to behave accordingly (print out a charge receipt or display a declined
message).  On the web it returns the result to the calling server and
whatever program the web site owner has written or purchased behaves
accordingly.

eChecks simply utilize the well established ACH (automatic clearing
house) system by which the ABA routing number and account number on the
bottom of your check is used to generate a bank wire or, in some rare
occurrences, a paper draft.

PayPal is simply a layer above these things for merchants who don't wish
to incur the expense of credit card/eCheck processing or for customers
who prefer to not repeatedly enter in their financial information for
security reasons.  They "broker" the credit card or eCheck transaction
by charging the customer's credit card or doing the electronic bank
draft against their bank account and pay the merchant.

The non-financial aspect of your question is a bit harder, as to what
happens from the transaction occurs and the item ships.  That depends on
how the business operates and is not really a completely e-commerce
issue.  Companies have been fulfilling orders by mail for decades.  I
have worked on a lot of these systems and if you'd like some examples
I'd be happy to discuss them with you.

*****************************
Jonathan R. Karlen
President/Senior Developer
Infoniq E-Business Solutions, Inc.
http://www.infoniq.com/
(914)-630-4509



-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 11:58 AM
To: Thelist (E-mail)
Subject: [thelist] eCommerce


Hi list,

I'm working on a school paper and I need to everything there is to know
about how, exactly, eCommerce works as far as from when the person
clicks the checkout/pay button to the moment they receive their item via
download or shipment. 

I'd like to know the details with Paypal, using standard Credit Cards,
and even eChecks.

Thanks for pointing out some "you can find that here..."'s or share your
infinite knowledge.

Rob Smith
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