E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is the largest sector of the electronics industry and is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry.
Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cash, cheque, or credit card, a consumer can use a payment app on a mobile device 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.
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.
Google Checkout was an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. The web checkout service was combined with the NFC mobile payments app launched in September of 2011 called Google Wallet under a platform brand of the same name. On November 20, 2013 and the web checkout part of the service was fully retired.
Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS) is an American multinational corporation which offers a wide range of financial products and services. FIS is most known for its development of Financial Technology, or FinTech, and as of Q2 2020 it offers its solutions in three primary segments: Merchant Solutions, Banking Solutions, and Capital Market Solutions. Annually, FIS facilitates the movement of roughly $9 trillion through the processing of approximately 75 billion transactions in service to more than 20,000 clients around the globe.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
Fortumo was an Estonian company which developed a platform for digital service providers for user growth and monetization.
Worldpay Group plc was a payment processing company. It was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange until 16 January 2018 when it was acquired by Vantiv. The combined company then took the name Worldpay, Inc. Worldpay, Inc. was acquired by FIS in July 2019 for $43 billion.
Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services, including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools.
The National Payments Corporation of India is an organization that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India. The organization is an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India.
Braintree is a Chicago-based company that primarily deals in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies. The company was acquired by PayPal on 26 September 2013.
Tmall, formerly Taobao Mall, is a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail, spun off from Taobao, operated in China by Alibaba Group. It is a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell brand-name goods to consumers in Greater China. It has over 500 million monthly active users, as of February 2018. In the last few years, it has opened its features to brands, not only for online sales but also for developing brand awareness. According to Alexa Rank, it is the third most visited website globally in 2021.
GoPago was a cloud-based mobile payment platform with an integrated point of sale system, based in Pasadena, CA. GoPago's payment platform allows customers to purchase orders in advance of arriving at brick-and-mortar merchants and merchants to manage orders in real-time. In August 2012, GoPago released GoPago LIVE, an application-based tablet point of sale system, which are free to merchants. GoPago's mobile payments platform is cloud-based, which allows transactions processing without near-field communications or QR-code technologies. On December 11, 2013, Amazon reached an agreement with GoPago to buy a license to its technology and hire certain members of its engineering team. On December 20, 2013, mobile commerce company DoubleBeam acquired all of the assets of GoPago, including all customers, systems, products, brand name and IP portfolio. On February 20, 2015, DoubleBeam was acquired by Verifone, Inc, and GoPago was subsequently rebranded as Verifone Cloud POS.
Payanywhere is a payments platform and app that allows merchants in the United States to accept credit and debit card payments while building customer relationships in-store, online, or on the go. Merchants may accept payments on their smartphone via a Bluetooth card reader or on an in-store “Storefront” solution featuring a tablet and stand, which was introduced on April 8, 2014. PayAnywhere offers credit card readers and apps that are compatible with both Apple and Android devices.
Cashier as a service (CaaS) refers to using a third party service as payment. When a shopper buys merchandise online, oftentimes, the shopper does not pay the merchant directly, but rather through a third party – the cashier. The cashier is trusted by both the shopper and the merchant and is expected to allow for reliable and secure transfer of money. By paying a merchant through a cashier, shoppers are able to pay for merchandise without giving away their financial information to the merchants.
Unified Payments Interface, commonly referred to as UPI, is an Indian instant payment system as well as protocol developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2012. The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions. It is used on mobile devices to instantly transfer funds between two bank accounts. The mobile number of the device is required to be registered with the bank. The UPI ID of the recipient can be used to transfer money. It runs as an open source application programming interface (API) on top of the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Indian Banks started making their UPI-enabled apps available on Google Play on 25 August 2016.
PhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial services company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. PhonePe was founded in December 2015, by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. The PhonePe app, based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), went live in August 2016.
QR code payment is a contactless payment method where payment is performed by scanning a QR code from a mobile app. This is an alternative to doing electronic funds transfer at point of sale using a payment terminal. This avoids a lot of the infrastructure traditionally associated with electronic payments such as payment cards, payment networks, payment terminal and merchant accounts.
Instant payment is a method of electronic funds transfer, allowing for almost immediate transfer of money between bank accounts. This was in contrast to the previous transfer times of one to three business days that had been in place until the mid-2010s.
Affirm Holdings, Inc. is an American public company founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin in 2012. It is a fintech company with a buy now, pay later service for online and in-store shopping. Affirm leads the U.S. buy now, pay later sector, reporting over 17 million users and US$20.2 billion annual GMV as of 2023.
