<Picture>E-Commerce Offers Opportunities If Consensus Can Be Reached/ Panelists (1)
<Picture><Picture><Picture>March 11, 1998<Picture><Picture><Picture>
Nikkei English News via NewsEdge Corporation : TOKYO (Nikkei)--The electronic commerce session started with a keynote address by Bill Melton, President and CEO of CyberCash.
He first started by stating that the Internet is indeed a revolution and that Internet commerce was growing at a phenomenal rate. For example, since July 1997, online airline ticket sales were up by 300%, stock transactions by 291% and book sales by 94%, he said, and 24% of Internet users were shopping online.
This revolution would lead to a number of major changes, Melton argued. For example, local warehouses can be bypassed since physical goods purchased online can be supplied directly by the producer. Digital goods like music need no warehouse and can be downloaded as he demonstrated on-screen. Having a secure electronic and digital package requiring a password (digital signature) is also essential to maintain intellectual property rights, he said.
Melton also explained the difference between e-commerce and e-business which Intel and SAP will be creating. For simple e-commerce, there can be a Web site offering an online catalog and security. E-business goes beyond this scope to include catalog management, order entry, shipping and freight, warehousing and inventory management, pricing, account reporting and other commerce-related tasks.
Another feature of e-commerce is money moving via electronic bits between the consumer, the consumer's bank, and the merchant. To the question of whose bag of bits it would be, he stressed that there would not be a single winner.
Melton showed that the existing financial domains used by VISA/MasterCard (SET), Japan Y Coin and others would be able to operate together through the Internet. Thus, their financial domains would retain their individuality but still work together. (More)
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