~The history and evolution for E-commerce~

The first extended use of a form of electronic commerce appeared in the early 1970swhen system called Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) was introduced. This enabled banks and financial institutions to transfer over secure networks large amounts of money either among themselves or with associated businesses. The EFT forms were used by employers to pay their employees by transferring the money directly to either their personal bank accounts or to their debit cards. To date, most payments made by the federal Government of USA are carried out via the EFT.

In the late 1970s a new model in business computerization was devised, namely the Electronic Data Exchange (EDI).2 EDI enables inter-company exchanges of documents, such as order forms for suppliers, invoices, customs forms, reimbursement receipts, stock inventories etc. EDI ran on a privately maintained network exclusively dedicated to this system. In parallel, many companies used to run their own private networks that were open to their business partners and acted as information exchange highway.

EDI technology has reduced costs both on the producers’ side and on the distributors’ (whether retail and wholesale). Likewise it brought about a substantial enhancement of purchase processes, by optimizing stocks and their correlation with the demand. Yet, several problematic issues — the high costs of its implementation and the difficulty of making the various versions of EDI fully compatible — caused EDI to fall short of attaining the ample market penetration one had expected.

In the late 1980s two new types of applications were widely adopted in the business world: electronic mail (e-mail) and group ware. When they were first introduced, these two systems were considered a major breakthrough. Despite this initial perception, both applications caused only insignificant growth of internal productivity.

In the year 1984, EDI, or electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably. In the year 1992, Compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer. In the year 1995, two biggest names launched in e-commerce which are Amazon.com and E-bay.com. In the year 2000,The U.S government extended the moratorium on Internet taxes until at least 2005.