EleCtrOnic CurReNcy

In these recent years, electronic currency has taken the place of credit cards and become the most popular means of payment on electronic commerce. The main problem causes the decrease usage of credit card is that the purchasers are required to give their personal information and credit card number to merchant or payment service provider when they purchase online. The customers have the feeling of unsecured as they are afraid of losing anonymity and privacy and this contributes to the success of electronic currency.

What is electronic currency? Electronic currency (also known as electronic money) is a money or script transferred electronically. It involves use of computer networks, the internet or digitally stored value systems. Examples of electronic currency which commonly used by public are Hong Kong's Octopus Card and Malaysia’s Touch n Go card. Hong Kong’s Octopus card, for example, can used to pay for public transport and even purchase in offline store. What the users need to do is just simply deposit the money into. After the Octopus Card Limited receives the money, it will deposit into banks, which is similar to debit-card-issuing banks which redeposit the money at central banks.

The advantage of using electronic currency is that, it is totally anonymous whereby the perpetrators are unable to obtain information about customers when the electronic money sent from a customer to a merchant. Besides, electronic currency payment which is working with password operating system is much more secured compared to other payment methods. Anyone who wants to operate it must give the passwords in prior. The password might be the biometric print of user’s finger, signature or others. Thus, if the electronic currency is unfortunately lost or stolen, the perpetrator will not be able to operate it also as he/she does not have the owner’s password. This feature, in turns, helps to enhance the confidence and security of users when using electronic money. In short, electronic money is securer and easier than other payment methods.

On the other hand, there are some drawbacks with the usage of electronic currency as well. For instance, the transfer of electronic money may raise the local issues on how to levy taxes on the users and merchants and the possible ease of money laundering. Furthermore, the usage of electronic currency may tend to a potential macroeconomic effect whereby the shortage of money supplies may occur as the demand for electronic money may exceed the real cash available.

If you are interested to know about electronic currency, feel free to surf the websites as below:
i) Future of Electronic Currency

ii) Electronic Money Development

E-tailing – A review on the post ‘Digital music sales increase 50%’

E-tailing refers to the primary use of Internet as the platform for consumers to shop for goods and services and it can be classified into pure plays and bricks and clicks. Specifically, pure plays retailing involves Internet as the sole medium for transactions and other commercial activities, for examples, Dell and Amazon; whereas brick and clicks, while using Internet to facilitate businesses, still incorporate the traditional use of physical store for goods display.

One of the major examples that depict how e-tailing has transformed consumers’ purchasing method involves the sales of digital music. According to the current trend, digital music is gradually and inevitably replacing the traditional physical album as a mean for consumer to purchase song tracks. For instance, in the first half of year 2007, the sales of digital tracks surged 49% up to USD$ 417.3 million while sales of physical albums have suffered a plunge of 15%. The rise of online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon is expected to further increase the popularity of digital music and on April 3 2008, iTunes store has surpassed Wal-Mart as the largest music retailer in the US, marking an unprecedented record in history that online music has outperformed the physical music format

Apple iPod

In order to further expand the online music market, companies such as Amazon and Apple has initiatedcollaboration with music records such as EMI to sell songs that come without copyright protection (DRM-free) and such moves have enabled consumers to transfer their purchased songs to any computers and music playing devices as well as burn their own CDs freely.

Digital rights management (DRM) is an access control technology which works to ensure compliance with intellectual property in respect of digital content. For example, Fairplay is a DRM technology created by Apple Inc to digitally encrypt audio files to prevent them from being played on unauthorized computers/devices as those files are only playable using QuickTime multimedia software. If you’re interested to know more about how the technology works, here is a useful link. Currently, the collection of DRM-free songs is still relatively limited as major music labels such as Universal Music, Sony BMG, and Warner Music have not advocated to selling unprotected music. This is one of the disadvantages of online music which limit consumers’ option to only a certain playing device.

As online music continues to grow, consumers need to be constantly aware of protecting intellectual property and are widely encouraged not to share and download uncopyrighted music. Just a couple of weeks back, a woman in the US has been ordered by the court to pay a bizarre amount fine totaling USD$ 2.92 million for willfully infringe music copyrights by sharing 24 files on Kazza. To read more about the story, click here.
Here are links to some of the pioneer online music stores:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/
http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011
http://free.napster.com/

CreDit CarD DebTs : CauSes and PreVentiOn

Nowadays, credit card has acted as cash whereby consumers can purchase good or services by swapping the credit card through the electronic verification. It is very convenient by carrying only one credit card rather than carrying bulks of cash in the wallet for the consumers. Thus, it is common to see a person holds more than 1 credit card at the same time. It is shown that many credit card holders have incurred into debts and as a result, it leads to bankruptcy. So, let me share with you the casues and preventions of credit card debts.


Causes :

Poor money management

Consumers mostly do not have a monthly spending plan and do not keep track of where the money is going. Without the plan, they are not aware what they have spending on and they may spend on something which are not necessary.

Income less, expenses high

Many people are spending more than their income where expenses level is higher than income. This is because consumers can purchase goods without paying cash immediately. As a result, consumers tend to spend overlimit and lead to incur on debts.

Missing payment / Late payment

Consumers may think that missing payment may not be a big deal for them. Actually, there is a penalty for the missing payment in the bill which already included. The creditors may also increase interest rate to the default rate. Thus, the higher interest rate increases the debts as well which making it more expensive to carry on a balance.

Prevention :

Budget planning

Create a budget and stick on it. A clear budget that includes monthly bills, food and miscellaneous items can assist in spending wisely with only "NEED" goods and not on "WANT" goods.

Use cash instead of credit card

If consumers purchase using cash, the feeling of tangible cash is running low in their wallet whereby they can know how much cash they are having at the time. So, it might help consumers on controlling on their spending habit.

Pay on time
Make sure you settle the bills on time. This is because paying on time eliminate unnecessary default penalty or higher interest rates. If you cannot pay back the whole balance, you should pay as much as possible, or else the credit card debts will keep on grow up and up.

Related links :

• How to Prevent Debts
• Top 10 Causes of Debt
• Manage and Eliminate Credit Card Debt

Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia: Its Potentials and Consumers' Adoption Strategies

No more queues or waiting! This is happening in Malaysia. By using a mobile payment system, you can make your payment to your seller without queuing up.

Mobile payment (also called as mobile web payments or WAP billing) is a collection of money from consumer via a mobile device, such as mobile phone, Smartphone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or any other devices. Without having cash on hand, cheques or credit card, a consumer can make payment transaction through a mobile device to pay for services and digital or hard goods such as music, ringtones, transportation fares, tickets and so on.

In Malaysia, there are some examples of mobile payments available for us, one of them is known as Mobile Money. It allow a registered user to make payments at anytime, anywhere using only a mobile phone coupled with 6-digits security Pin via sms. This is so easy and convenient way to settle our bills. With such application, this will definitely be a great boom to the e-commerce industry in Malaysia. Besides, some well-known companies such as Maxis, CELCOM and many more, are also coming up this concept to update their payment services. To read more about Maxis Mobile Payments, click on this link.

Most developed and developing countries have well adopted this mobile payment. Also, someone estimated that combined market for all types of mobile payments is reach $600B globally by 2013. Thus, you may foresee that everyone will pay by just using their mobile phone while shopping at everywhere at anytime somewhere in the future.

Time is money. Hence, people often want to get into the fast lane to save time or settle their payments in a speedy way. A practically example of mobile payment, in which adopted by Malaysian is using Touch 'n Go and Smart Tag to pay their highways tolls car parking fees, LRT and bus fees, and so on. Besides, Maxis has introduced an innovative service to market to save time for purchasing and paying transportation charges with a tap of the user's mobile phone, is known as Maxis FastTap. In addition, the users can use their Maybankard to pay Visa paywaves outlets such as Watson, Parkson, Jusco and many more.

In order to make mobile payment system in Malaysia a real success, following steps should be taken immediately. First, educate the consumers about mobile payment system, the usage and the functions of it. Also, cooperate with more banks and merchants to widen the ability of mobile payments. Other than that, offer more security collaborate solution for mobile payment to gain consumers' satisfaction and confidence on the system.

Prepared by Carrie Hon