Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud

When buying at e-auctions, sellers are increasingly motivated to sell surpluses and even regular products via auctions. In some cases, e-auctions provide an opportunity to buyers to find inexpensively or unique item fairly quickly. A prudent corporate buyer should certainly look both at those manufacturers and distributors that conduct auctions periodically (e.g. GM or Dell) and at third party auctioneers (e.g. eBay or auctions.yahoo.com)

E-auctions have several limitations, including Possibility of fraud. Auction items are in many cases unique, used, or antique. Because buyers cannot see the item, they may get a defective product. Buyers can also commit fraud. Thus, the fraud rate in e-auctions is very high.

There are several types of e-auction fraud:

• Bid shielding (a buyer’s action) - Having phantom bidders bid at a very high price when an auction begins; they pull out at the last minute, and the bidder who bid a much lower price wins.
• Loss and damage claims (a buyer’s action) - Buyers claim they never received an item or received it in damaged condition and then ask for a refund. They might be trying to get a freebie. The seller sometimes cannot prove whether the item ever arrived or whether it was in perfect condition when shipped.
• Fake photos and misleading descriptions - In reaching for bidders’ attention, some sellers distort what they can truly sell. Borrowed images, ambiguous descriptions, and falsified facts are some of the tactics that sellers might employ to convey a false impression of the item.
• High shipping costs and handling fees - Some sellers just want to get a little more cash out of bidders. Postage and handling rates vary from seller to seller. Some charge extra to cover “handling” costs and other overhead intangibles, whereas others charge to cover the cost of packaging supplies, even though such supplies are often available for free.
• Selling reproductions - A seller sells something that the seller claims is original, but it turns out to be a reproduction.

The largest Internet auctioneer, eBay, has introduced several measures in an effort to reduce fraud which is:

• User identity verification - Verified eBay User, a voluntary program, encourages users to supply eBay with information for online verification. By offering their Social Security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth, users can qualify for the highest level of verification on eBay.
• Feedback Forum - The eBay Feedback Forum allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals.
• Insurance policy - eBay offers insurance underwritten by Lloyd’s of London. Users are covered up to $200, with a $25 deductible. The program is provided at no cost to eBay users.
• Nonpayment punishment - eBay implemented a policy against those who do not honor their winning bids. To help protect sellers, first-time nonpayment results in a friendly warning. A sterner warning is issued for a second-time offense, a 30-day suspension for a third offense, and indefinite suspension for a fourth offense.
• Authentication services - It is to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. It difficult to perform because their training and experience, experts can detect counterfeits based on subtle detail.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication toll for Companies

Corporate blogging is another communications and marketing channel. However, unlike a press release, advertisement in a magazine or a listing in the Yellow Pages, corporate blogs are two-way communications It is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals.

Benefits of Corporate Blogging

1) Build rapport with customers. If you publish a corporate blog, you’re giving your customers a channel to interact and get to know your brand and organisation in a format that they’re familiar and comfortable with.

2) Free feedback and suggestions from key constituents. Corporate blogging gives you insights to what people are saying about your products, your brand, your competitors, your marketing from the comfort of your office chair.

3) Position your business as a thought leader. One of the most effective marketing strategies is to show instead of telling. You can use your corporate blog to take advantage of this strategy by demonstrating your expertise and experience in your industry through commentary, guides, analysis, etc. The quality of your blog content reflects the quality of your organisation.

Corporate blogs are a new, powerful marketing communications tool for any organisation. It doesn’t matter what kind of organisation you are: small or large, SMEs or corporates, for-profit or non profit—done correctly, corporate blogging can give you a massive Return On Blog.

Corporate blog examples:

• Kid Chan Studio Blog - A good example of a corporate blog from a Malaysian company.

• Exabytes Blog - Another Malaysian blog, the Exabytes Blog does a good job of humanising a ‘virtual’ company and notifying readers of special offers.

• English Cut - Thomas Mahon isn’t nearly as big as Sun or Google, but his blog has made him a very successful small business. He tailors Prince Charles’ suits!
  

Information above are obtained and refined from:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog

• http://buzzmedia.com.my/blog/08/corporate-blogging-breakdown-what-it-and-why-does-my-organisation-need-it

Review A Local E-Commerce Site

The local e-commerce site that i choose to review is a local florist shop, Blooming Florist. The site provides quality flowers and quality services to its customers.

The services includes :

• Floral Fresh Cut Flowers For All Occasions


• Specialises in Roses, Tulips, Gerberas, Lilies & Heliconias


• Flowers & Fruits, Fruit Baskets, Hampers, Gifts, Cakes and Candies
  

The catalogs of the products are included with a rough description of the product, picture of the product and the price of the product.

The orders could be made via the website or through their retail outlet or even through fax. The form for ordering through fax is available for download at: http://www.blooming.com.my/blooming/blooming_order_form.pdf

The website also allow various type of payment method which could be one of the advantage compared to the competitors. The payment methods that are provided are :

1. Online Credit Card Payment
   VISA or Mastercard
   AMEX, Diners Club, JCB


2. Online Banking:
   Maybank2u.com
   RHB e-Banking
   Hong Leong e-Payment
   FPX(HLB, BCB, Bank Islam, PB)
   PosPay


3. Mobile Payment - Mobile-Money.com


4. Pay using Kawanku ATM


5. Open Bill Payment
   Maybank2u.com
   RHB e-Banking
   Hong Leong e-Payment
   Public Bank


6. Cash Payment-Pay cash at Blooming's Outlets
   Mid Valley Megamall 03-2282 0300, Jalan Sultan 03-7958 7558, Kelana Business Centre 03-7803 3333, Lucky Garden, Bangsar 03-2096 1833

The website is also being protected by VeriSign.

This would certainly increased the security and the confidence of customers toward the security system of the website. All the features above will help a lot in improving the business.

All information above are obtained from http://www.blooming.com.my/blooming/index.jsp

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen’s adoption strategies.

E-government is a general term describing the use of technologies to facilitate the operation of government and the disbursement of government information and services. E-government is an abbreviation of the phrase electronic government. E-government deals heavily with Internet applications to aid in governments, but also covers a number of non-Internet concerns.

The Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It will improve how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. At the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement

The implementation status of e-government project in Malaysia:

• Project Monitoring System (SPP II)


• Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)


• Generic Office Environment (GOE)


• Electronic Procurement (EP)


• Electronic Services (E-Services)
  
• Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)


• E-Syariah

The current applications of e-government in Malaysia such as:

• Government’s drive for e-government services


• Electronic Labour Exchange (http://www.elx.gov.my/) has matched 75,000 potential employees with employers since 2005.


• SMS alert on e-government services


• Online renewal of driving licenses


• Electronic filing of income tax forms


• Voter information


• Details for government tenders
  
• Employment opportunities
  

Problems faced in e-government implementation:

• Lack of public awareness – 60% of the public are not aware of the services offered. Solution: Increase awareness through TV advertisements and organizing workshops at shopping malls.


• Online Behaviour - Malaysians remain sceptical on being distrust on electronic transaction especially on banking online and buying from an Internet store.


• Language barrier – Most of the government websites had in the past been in Bahasa Malaysia. However, there are English versions now. But still have many citizen are not proficient in english languages, so they are lack of language to access the e-government applications.
  

Ways to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications:

• The government needs provide websites with multiple language version such as chinese, malay,india and so on. For these purpose, it allow citizen can select the language they want and also make more convenient for them to read and understand it.


• Next, increase awareness through TV and radio advertisements, and organising workshops at shopping malls.


• Provide consultation services on how to use those services. It is provided who is lack of knowleged for using computer to access e-government.


• The government needs marketing expertise to better promote awareness, encouragement and dissemination of information on the benefits that can be obtained by using e-government

As a conclusion, the main challenge in e-government in Malaysia is the technological challenge, which includes issues like standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security. The key priority in Malaysia now is to improve the core government application and integrating more service across agencies.

Electronic Currency

Electronic money (also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

Advantages and disadvantages of electronic money

Advantages.

• Issuer advantages:Electronic currency works in a much simpler and cheaper way,which makes it ideal for micro-payments and thus much more attractive for credit companies. The low cost of electronic currency is that it does not require the huge amount of expensive infrastructure that other systems do, in particular credit cards,because the value in a card can be transferred into a reader without need to contact a network facility to corroborate the payment, the transaction can be performed locally and the money will stay in the reader until later download.

• Consumer convenience: Electronic currency could prove very convenient for consumers. Because it involves advanced charge of money from the owner’s bank account, almost anybody can be supplied with a smart card, as there is no risk to the issuer. Consumers will also find it useful to have to do without carrying cash for small transactions, such as bus fares.

• Increased consumer confidence: Because a smart card only holds the amount of money that the bearer has placed on it, consumers will be more willing to use it to purchase over the Internet without fear of somebody else misusing the payment information, as happens with credit card fraud. Some of the schemes are also being issued with a built in locking code, which will allow users to lock the cash on a card, making sure that if the card gets lost or stolen another person will not be able to use the money.

• Payer anonymity: The payer can remain anonymous, as is the case with paying in cash.

Disadvantages.

Although the potential advantages for electronic money are considerable, there are still several problems that should provide a healthy dose of skepticism for this payment system.

• Consumer confusion: With three schemes competing to become the electronic currency standard, there is a real possibility of the whole system becoming too complicated for users. One of the main problems with too many schemes would be that the user may not be able to use the card everywhere, which is what would be expected of a system that is meant to replace physical currency.

• Regulatory maze: The regulation for electronic currency is still unclear in some vital points, which must be answered before the system is made more widely available.

• Security: The main concern that must exist in the minds of those interested in the implementation of electronic cash must be security. As happens with physical cash, widespread counterfeiting of electronic currency could have huge implications for the economy.

Information above are obtained and refined from:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cash

• http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/2255/1/electronicmoney.pdf

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its Potentials and Consumer Adoption Strategies

Humans are born creative. With rapid improvement in technology and communication systems, humans created a new way of performing sale and purchase process. The new way is known as mobile payment. Mobile Payment is where consumers could make payment through thier mobile phones. In Malaysia, Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd is providing this service.

Mobile Money have the potential to grow as it works almost the same as the ATM cards but with no cash involved. In the view of security, consumers are protected by the PIN-based Mobile Payment Solution where consumers are required to enter a 6-digit pin to confirm transactions through their mobile phones.

Mobile Money also reduce the problem of consumers having to que for long hours to make a payment such as telephone bills and electricity bills. With Mobile Money, payments of the bills can be done anywhere and anytime with just a single SMS made through the mobile phone. Consumers are also provided a Refund and Reversal Feature where consumers are allowed to do reversal (within same business day) and refund (within 10 days from transaction date). This is to ensure that the consumers are protected if the are any wrong in making a transactions.

Consumers are also adopting the mobile payment system. In Malaysia, consumers frequently use the system to pay for donations. Payment for ringtones and wallpapers are also a common transaction seen in the mobile payment system. For advanced consumers, they use the mobile payment system to pay credit card debts, electricity bills, telephone bills and even summons.

With this, I could predict that soon all transcations will be changed to mobile transactions as it is more convinient. For more details on the mobile payment system, kindly visit the Mobile Money website by clicking the image below:

All information above are adopted from www.mobile-money.com

The application prepaid cash card for consumer

With a debit card, the money for a purchased item comes directly out of the holder’s checking account (called demand deposit account). The actual transfer of funds from the holder’s account to the merchant’s takes place within 1 to 2 days. Master card, Visa, and EuroPay are the predominant debit cards.

Traditional debit cards are associated with bank checking accounts held by bankable people Visa/ MasterCard and member banks cannot issue normal debit cards to “Un-banked” people without checking accounts.

In the recent years, the “Prepaid Debit Cards” came into existence and popularity. The biggest distinction with “Prepaid Debit Cards” is that no checks are associated with Prepaid Debit Card accounts.

Prepaid Debit Cards are much safer for the banks to issue because:

• All transactions for these new debit cards are authorized online against account balances
• There are no “Floats” from written checks that can cause overdrafts

One of the examples of prepaid debit card is Visa card. Visa card is a stored value card designed to handle small purchases or micropayments. This chip-based card can be used in the physical (off-line) world or on the internet. When a purchase is made, the cost of the purchase is deducted from the cash loaded on the card. Visa Cash can be used only at vendors having special terminals displaying the visa cash logo.

The prepaid debit card applications are:

• General Spending Debit Card
• Payroll and commission payout Card
• Remittance - Funds Transfer within and across borders
• Affinity Group Card
• Travel Card
• Student Card
• Gift CardElectronic Benefits Payment Card – Government benefits