Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

Auction is a mechanism by which buyers make bids and sellers place offers. Whereas e-auction means electronic auction which allows auctions conducted online. It brings a lot of benefits to the users but it has several limitations. Frauds in e-auction have become higher and higher but there are some preventions that can alleviate it.

User identity verification

If the users wish to have online verification, they have to offer their date of birth, identity card number or driving license number to the website to qualify for the highest level of verification. The service offered may have service charge on the users. For example, eBay uses the services of Equifax to verify user identities for a $5 fee.

Feedback forum

The feedback forum enables the registered members to build up their online trading reputations. The users can comment on their experiences of trading with others. If the particular seller or buyer often receives good comments, other users will feel relieve to trade with him or her.

Escrow services

It is a third party service which protects both seller and buyer. The buyer mails the payment to the escrow service and it will verify the payment and alert the seller when everything is checked out. After that, the seller ships the goods to the buyer. After an agree-upon inspection period, the buyer notifies the service which then sends a check to the seller. For example, i-escrow.com and fortis-escrow.com provide the escrow services.

Nonpayment punishment

It is an important policy against those who do not honor their winning bids. A warning will be given for the first-time nonpayment and it will result in suspension of account if the buyer commits a certain number of offenses.

E-Government in Malaysia : Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

Electronic Government is defined as the use of Internet and other digital devices in public sector to deliver services and information. The adoption of e-government integrates both the processing and the communication technologies since it integrates people, processes, information, and technology in the service of achieving government objectives. By implementing e-government, it will help to improve the government processes, connect citizens and build interactions with and within the civil society.

E-government is started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by Malaysia Government in 1996.E-government has seven flagship applications introduced in MSC. The seven main project that Malaysia has so far implemented system are electronic Procurement (eP), Project Monitoring System (PMS), Electronic Services System (E-services), Human Resource Management Information System(HRIMS), Generic Office Environment (GOE), E-Syariah and Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX).

Common problem encounter by Citizen’s is confusing before advancing the online e-government services over the equivalent paper processes and ensuring the privacy and security because some need to further clarification on what exactly should in the law. Besides, development of E-government has great uncertainty regarding technological change and negative impact because the technological developments are moving very fast; it is very difficult for Citizens to anticipate future impact in detail. Furthermore, some of Citizen’s have the lowest levels of access by digital divide because not all know how to use online access. Thus, these individual will lose the benefits of e-government.

Ways to encouraged citizens to use the government application is to build on a foundation of facts based on information from its citizens. Example, government asking the citizens on what they want rather than doing something that the government want. Second, provide internet access points in convenient places and relevant public places for citizens to use free of charge or promoting the E-Government through newspaper, advertising, magazine, radio.

In order to make the right decision and avoid falling behind, government need to identify and resolve the different issues that have arisen and implementing the good strategies.

Review a local e-commerce site

E-commerce essentially covers all online activities aimed at inducing Internet users to purchase products and services online. For example, Air Asia Berhad is one of the local e-commerce website.

http://www.airasia.com/site/my/en/home.jsp

It provide online services such as booking ticket, information about destination, shopping chat, travel services, corporate services and so on. It allows customers from around the world to gain more information about them and its products. Potential customers can browse online catalogues without having to leave their homes or offices.

Furthermore, customer can book the ticket through this website http://booking.airasia.com/skylights/cgi-bin/skylights.cgi . Customer can fill in the detail such as date, number of guest, the destination and whether you want to one way or return. In the booking categories, it also provide more information about the way of online payment. Through the shopping chat, AirAsia offers a choice of credit cards to fit the needs of your lifestyle in different countries such as AirAsia-Citibank Credit Card and AirAsia-Citibank Gold Card are offer for Malaysia guest.

Moreover, Air Asia also provide latest news about the famous places in the travel services categories. It is very convinent to customers because it provide availability of search engine to find the particular information. When talking about the colour and fonts selections, it using red colour as a main colour and font word design. AirAsia also provide "Help & Info" means that when any cutomers do not understand particular information, they can contact them or Frequent Ask Question (FAQ). Sometime it have advertise promotion appear in the web page, so the customers will know the latest promotion price or packages.

In the conclusion, Air Asia is a famous local e-commerce in Malaysia. Most of the local customers like to fly with Air Asia plane because it provide a clear picture and information to the customers.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blogging is widely used and published by an organization to achieve its organizational goals through internal, external and CEO Blogs. Thus, all current browsers which include Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 enable readers to read the recent posts easily without truly visit the blog through supporter of RSS technology.

According to research of NewPR Wiki, there was 58 (11.6%) of the Fortune 500 were blogging as of 17/5/2008. One of the successful blogs is Amazon Web Services Blog by Amazon.com that about Amazon web services, products, tools and developer information. It helps to improve the communication and its customer services, attract more people to consume and discuss new products online.

Corporate blogging provides a clear mind map or editorial guidelines of overall marketing or communication strategy to its employees and third parties with organization communication plan and media mix. Besides that, it encourages employee participation in contribution of expertise, free discussion of issues or topics and deal with it, collective intelligence, be a direct communication between various layers of an organization and shares their views with others employees, teams or spokespersons publicly. Furthermore, it can be used to announce new products and services, explain and clarify policies of the company and to react on public criticism on certain issues. Business blog can interact with a target market on a personal level by building a level of credibility and asking for their feedback on products and services.

One of the pros of corporate blogging is posts and comments are easy to reach and follow by employees due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Besides that, it can be more accessible among the executives since the corporate blogging are an “unparalleled information gathering mechanism”. Furthermore, a searchable archive of thoughts and ideas can be created and jotting down within an hour through corporate blogging that cost more cheaply than the come out with slides of presentation, hard copy of magazines and mass e-mails that need approval before being sent it out. Lastly, executives can receive the important information from employees and customers’ questions and feedback that will be permanently recorded on the blog and increases the efficiency while decreases the time wasted on needless e-mails.

However, corporate blogging might make it easy for defamation and invasion of privacy or to breach information security and loss of company confidentiality. Besides that, it will create an expectation of updating the blog regularly and the time that taken in writing a blog will cause loss of $ 759 billion in productivity every year. Additionally, a new style of communication will be mastered since corporate blogging become popular in these recent years.

Electronic Currrency

What is electronic currency? Electronic currency also can call as e-money, electronic cash, electronic money, digital money, digital cash or digital currency. It refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically and this also involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. The examples of electronic currency are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit.

Example of corporation that provide E-micropayment systems is paystone.com. Paystone Technologies Corp. founded in 2001, is a private Internet payment and money transfer company keen to providing secure, easy, real time Internet transactions. It also provides an inexpensive online payment method without the risk of chargebacks from fraudulent credit card use. Paystone can efficiently handle small financial transactions (micropayments) as low as $0.25 which would also beneficial to its users.The ability to process micropayments opens a whole new world for entrepreneurs of all sizes. This makes a whole new range of content available to personal account holders. The large online merchant can also realize the full benefits of the Paystone solution to expand and increase the profitability of their business.

How it works for easy to buying products and content online?
Firstly is visit this website, http://www.paystone.com/ to sign up for free Paystone Personal Account. Then, load money into Paystone account from bank account either directly or through online or telephone banking bill payment option. After done it, can ready to buy items online from any merchant displaying the Paystone logo.

Secondly,visit to mircopayment demo to choose the content you would like to purchase then click buy. You will directed to a secure Paystone payment page. Then enter your email address and Paystoine password to confirm your purchase. The purcahse is complete and the content can now be accessed.

Thirdly, Paystone Technologies Corporation provide feature that anyone can send and receive money to and from e-mail address in a country that Paystone support or Cashing out the Paystone Account for transfer the money to bank account in many country or if have Paystone Express ATM card can withdraw cash at over 650,000 ATM machines worldwide.

The application of prepaid cash card for consumers

What is prepaid cash card.
The prepaid cash card is a stored valued card and it requires insertion into a card reader or contact with the card reader to perform a transaction. The function of prepaid cash card is almost same with credit card but the only different is prepaid cash card only can be used when the money loaded in have not finished. Obviously, it provides users to have a better control on their money.

Benefit of using prepaid card reader.
First of all, the transaction can be taken place within short period of time. The user only needs to insert into the device or scan with the device, after that the receipt will be given to the user to sign on it. The user is not needed to prepare the right amount of money to pay for it. So, it saves time and it is easy to use. It is sure that it does a favour to those who are out of time because transaction is completed within a short period. Besides that, users also need not to have a long queue to purchase public transportation tickets.

When we are carrying large amount of money, it is easy for us to lose the money. So, it is wise to use prepaid cash card to prevent the loss of cash. If the card is lost, user can make a report to the card distributor to prevent unauthorized transaction. The card also can be replaced by the user. So, we can see that the assets of prepaid cash card user are safeguarded.

Nowadays, bankruptcy cases are increasing due to the usage of credit card. So, it is a must for the consumer to have a proper plan in using their money. The prepaid cash card can help the consumers to plan their spending by having a limit on the amount of money that can be used by them. The amount of money in prepaid cash card is depended on how much the amount of money the user loaded in. Thus, the users cannot use more than the amount of money that they loaded in.

Example of prepaid cash card
Touch’n go card in Malaysia usually is used to pay transportation fees when taking a ride on public transportation or passing a toll. Touch’n go also can be used to pay parking fees in certain building in condition that there is a reader device. But soon, the Touch'n go card can be used to buy fast food and goods in convenience shop. For the Octopus card in Hong Kong, it is used for payment at convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, on-street parking meters, car parks, and other point-of-sale applications such as service stations and vending machines.

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

M-payment (mobile payment) is a point-of-sale payment made through a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, a smart phone, or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Using m-payment, a person with a wireless device could pay for items in a store or settle a bill without interacting with any staff member. Mobile payment can be used to purchase any number of digital or hard goods, such as Music, video, ringtones, games, wallpapers, books, magazines, tickets and so on.

The most famous mobile payment system in Malaysia is MobileMoneyWallet (MM Wallet). Mobile Money or MM Wallet is one of the online payment. MM Wallet is a new feature from Mobile Money that will turn your mobile phone into an electronic wallet. It brings you superior convenience that allows you to shop cash-free, making remote payment & send money with SMS.

Linked to: http://www.mobile-money.com/

Mobile Money helps to reduce the bottlenecks that created by cash, cheques and credit cards. Users are only using mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere via SMS. This gives benefit to users to buy products online and pay the merchant using their mobile phone without being physically present at the store.

Therefore, mobile payment system is user friendly, it is safe and secure. User do not need to worry about the cheque or credit card handling problem and fraud, the system will conforms to the stringent requirement set by participating bank. However, mobile payment system also help user to avoid the trouble for long queues and looking for car parks. User can enjoy the super fast payment process by just make their transaction via SMS, website, or point-of-sale system. It helps user save up a lot of time. There are no minimum monthly transactions or no any rental fees required. Users only need to pay very low transaction fee compare to what actually charge to credit card.

In the conclusion, using MM Wallet, user can receive payments from Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. It is very convenient and secure.