The development of E-Commerce Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The development of E-Commerce - Research Paper Example Pure or traditional brick and mortar e-tailing is also constituent of e-commerce. The industry has been growing very steadily over the last two decades but one of the issues that concerns modern day e-commerce is the issues related to the security of business transactions (Andam, 2003, pp.6-13). The history of e-commerce can be dated back to the days when computers, internets and modems were invented. Before 1991, the internet (then popularly known as the Arpanet) was not open for public or commercial uses. Hence, it can be said that the true birth of e-commerce was possible only after the year 1991 when the internet was opened for commercial purposes. Initially the term e-commerce referred only to commercial transactions that took place with the help of electronic media and then latest technology such as EDI and EFT. The process of clearing payments related to business transactions simplified drastically. The lead time also reduced significantly and users soon realized the hidden potential e-commerce and its application the corporate world. The e-commerce was readily accepted in the corporate sector because of cost efficiency, faster transactions, lower cost per transactions, and lower documentation requirements. With the advancement of internet, the popularity of online transactions in US grew very rapidly from the year 1991 (Humphrey, Mansell, & Pare, 1999, pp.31-32). The biggest threat in the virtual world of e-commerce was from the transfer of critical business related information or transactions over the public networks such as the internet. It almost took four years to develop the various security protocols including hypertext transfer protocol (http) that allows the users to get speedy and continuous access to internet (Panagariya, 1999, pp.10-11). In the year 2000, many Western European and American companies represented themselves in the World Wide Web