With the astonishing growth of the Internet, many companies are finding new and exciting ways to expand upon their business opportunities. There are very few successful companies that do not use computers in their everyday business activities, which also means there are very few companies that do not use E-commerce. To emphasize the point that the effect of the Internet is so widespread in today’s business communities, one online article stated that more than 100,000 companies have Internet addresses, and 20,000 companies have Web sites on the Internet as of February 1999 (DataQuest, 1999). These numbers have more than tripled since 1995, and the trend shows no signs of slowing. What exactly is E-commerce? To most casual Internet surfers, E-commerce means online shopping; “for workaholics pointing their web browser to Amazon.com to order an emergency present because they forgot someone’s birthday again.” (Weiss, 1999) As we will soon find out, this is far from the case. Simply put, E-commerce is the exchange of business information between two or more organizations. An example of this would be buying and selling products or services over the Internet. E-commerce became very popular soon after it proved to be an efficient means to conduct long distance transactions. Electronic commerce, or E-commerce has developed very rapidly in the last few years and has left some people wondering what it is all about. "Most people think E-commerce is just about buying and selling things over the Internet." (Wareham, 2000). E-commerce is a broad term describing the electronic exchange of business data between two or more organizations’ computers. Some examples might be the electronic filing of your income tax return and on-line billing for services or products received. E-commerce also includes buying and selling any item over the Internet, electronic fund transfer, smart cards, and all other methods of conducting bu...
