Telidon was a videotex/teletext service developed by the Canadian Communications Research Centre (CRC) during the late 1970s and supported by commercial enterprises led by Infomart in the early 1980s. The CRC referred to Telidon as a "second generation" system, offering improved performance, 2D colour graphics, multilingual support and a number of different interactivity options supported on various hardware. With additional features added by AT&T Corporation, and 16 other contributors in North America and supported by the Federal Government, Telidon was redefined as a protocol and became the NAPLPS standard.
Videotex was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information to a user in computer-like format, typically to be displayed on a television or a dumb terminal.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites, and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
Mobile payment generally refer to payment services operated under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cash, cheque, or credit cards, a consumer can use a mobile to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods. Although the concept of using non-coin-based currency systems has a long history, it is only in the 21st century that the technology to support such systems has become widely available.
The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France.
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider, a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, while ISP mostly serves to provide access to the Internet and generally provides little if any exclusive content of its own. In the U.S., the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) portion of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act has expanded the legal definition of online service in two different ways for different portions of the law. It states in section 512(k)(1):
(A) As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.
(B) As used in this section, other than subsection (a), the term "service provider" means a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefore, and includes an entity described in subparagraph (A).
Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.
Post Office Ltd is a retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of products including postage stamps and banking to the public through its nationwide network of post office branches. The company is owned by UK Government Investments.
Online banking, also known as internet banking, web banking or home banking, is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial institution's website. The online banking system will typically connect to or be part of the core banking system operated by a bank to provide customers access to banking services in place of traditional branch banking. Online banking significantly reduces the banks' operating cost by reducing reliance on a branch network, and offers greater convenience to customers in time saving in coming to a branch and the convenience of being able to perform banking transactions even when branches are closed. Internet banking provides personal and corporate banking services offering features such as viewing account balances, obtaining statements, checking recent transactions, transferring money between accounts, and making payments.
Prestel, the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maximum of 90,000 subscribers in the UK and was eventually sold by BT in 1994.
Telkom SA SOC Limited is a South African wireline and wireless telecommunications provider, operating in more than 38 countries across the African continent. Telkom is majority-privatised with it being 39% state-owned enterprise.
A giro transfer, often shortened to giro, is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and initiated by the payer, not the payee. The debit card has a similar model. Giros are primarily used in Europe; although electronic payment systems such as the Automated Clearing House exist in the United States and Canada, it is not possible to perform third party transfers with them. In the European Union, there is the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) which allows electronic giro or debit card payments in euros to be executed to any euro bank account in the area.
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.
Account aggregation sometimes also known as financial data aggregation is a method that involves compiling information from different accounts, which may include bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, and other consumer or business accounts, into a single place. This may be provided through connecting via an API to the financial institution or provided through "screen scraping" where a user provides the requisite account-access information for an automated system to gather and compile the information into a single page. The security of the account access details as well as the financial information is key to users having confidence in the service.
Mobile banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. Unlike the related internet banking it uses software, usually called an app, provided by the financial institution for the purpose. Mobile banking is usually available on a 24-hour basis. Some financial institutions have restrictions on which accounts may be accessed through mobile banking, as well as a limit on the amount that can be transacted. Mobile banking is dependent on the availability of an internet or data connection to the mobile device.
The term mobile commerce was originally coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey at the launch of the Global Mobile Commerce Forum, to mean "the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless technology." Many choose to think of Mobile Commerce as meaning "a retail outlet in your customer’s pocket."
Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central Africa region. The company offers mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, consumer electronics, ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming, and fibre optic services. It is most renowned as the home of MPESA, a mobile banking SMS-based service.
An online wallet is a software or web service that allows users to store and control their online shopping information, such as logins, passwords, shipping address and credit card details. It also provides a method for consumers to purchase products from online retailers.
Alipay is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based.
Started in 1983, Boston CitiNet was a local online service developed by Applied Videotex Systems, Inc. of Belmont, Massachusetts. The service allowed modem-equipped personal computer users to dial-in and access a range of information and messaging services including chat, forums, email and a variety of content. There were several other companies offering paid/subscription services as the time like The Source, CompuServe and Boston-based Delphi. Boston Citinet was unique since it was free to access and was supported by advertising. Messaging services such as email and chat required registration and a monthly fee of $9.95 - an early example of the now popular freemium business model.
