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.

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Credit card debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt.Debt results when a client of a credit card company purchases an item or service through the card system. Debt accumulates and increases via interest and penalties when the consumer does not pay the company for the money he or she has spent. The results of not paying this debt on time are that the company will charge a late payment penalty and report the late payment to credit rating agencies. The late payment penalty itself increases the amount of debt the consumer has. When a consumer has been late on a payment, it is possible that other creditors, even creditors the consumer was not late in paying, may increase the interest rates the consumer is paying.

Now, I would to share some causes of credit card debt. First, with prices of goods and services going up and not the income, more Malaysians are forced to spend beyond their earnings. Thus, they will use credit card to purchase goods and services and unable to pay back the expenses. Lastly, with no savings, people can also be sucked into credit card debt by unemployment. They will use the credit card to cover basic living expenses and may found difficulties to pay back the amount.

Let me share some tips to prevention credit card debt with you all. First, if you find yourself making interest payments every month on your credit cards, the first step is to assess your income and expenses. Total your monthly expenses and subtract them from your income. This is your disposable income after expenses, and also the amount you have each month to use as you deter mine.

The next step is to stop charging items on your credit cards and pay cash for items you must buy. Then analyze your credit card debt, pay credit card debt with highest rate of interest in priority. Use your disposable income to completely pay off the card with the highest rate. Once that card is paid off, close the account and destroy the card. Then focus your attention on the next card, and do the same until all of the debt on your cards has been completely paid off.

Finally, just use one or two cards and use them as a financial tool. Remember that a credit card is not the same as free money. If you still have problem, leave you credit card at home while you are shopping.

Conclusion, credit cards should be used for emergencies only, unless you plan on paying the entire balance off immediately. Never pay the minimum amount due unless you truly cannot afford any more.

The application of 3rd party certification in Malaysia

Third party certificate is a digital certificate that is used to verify identity, protect personal data, secure websites and online shopping carts and more. Third party certificate also can be called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. SSL is the standard security technology for creating an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remains confidential. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers. In order to be able to generate an SSL link, a web server requires an SSL Certificate.

When a customer wants to send the credit card information to purchase the item, the customer wants to know that the confidential information is secure and sent to the company. So, digital certificate that is issued by trusted 3rd party provides verification that the website does indeed represent your company, thereby verifying your company's identity.

SSL certificate plays an important role in online commerce. The first matter customers considered is the private information they provided is remained confidential. Once they satisfied their private information is secure, then only they will consider buying the product. So, it is important that the security is integrated into any online services.

The certificate is issued by the certificate authority. One of the certificate authorities in Malaysia is Trustgate. It is a licensed certificate authority in Malaysia since 1999. It also offers other services other than issuing SSL certificate such as delivery of security and e-commerce training, managed security services, application development and system integration.

The e-commerce or online services provides us a lot of benefits but there are risks in using them, so the SSL certificate is essential to give confidence to the customers that the websites that they are using are trustworthy.