Lecture 20: Web Commerce Technologies

Internet Payment Systems

One of the most difficult issues in Web Commerce is setting up a method of collecting monetary payment. Since the early days of the Web, this has attracted a great deal of theorietical interest (eg, this 1997 PDF report on Micropayments), but in the end the "traditional" payment modes (ie, credit card companies) have mostly dominated.

Approaches to Payment: Use a third-party payment "clearing house" service, eg WorldPay, DirectOne.; Direct merchant relationship with bank -- uses bank-supplied "back-end" software.; "New" approaches, eg PayPal.
Issues: Risk of credit-card fraud; Where is the transaction information stored?; Cost issues: may be as high as 2.5% to 5% of transaction.

The tutorial for this lecture is Tutorial #20.
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