Agnivo Roy

With the widespread use of e-commerce in most developed countries, online shopping and business has reached a new level; thanks to the cutting edge web and payment processing technologies, overall functionality and ease of use. In countries like the USA, online shopping and ecommerce is rapidly catching up with the market share of physical, brick-and-mortar stores. One of the most important factors that has enabled this acceptability and usability of ecommerce as a mainstream application are credit / debit cards. Surely, credit cards have worked as catalysts to the implementation of e-commerce and without them it would never have been so much popular as it is now.

I guess you have come across the different online stores (or even ordered stuff). The banks are also coming up with exciting credit card plans every now and then like credit cards with cash back. Have you wondered how easy and useful has e-commerce have become in our daily lives? Earlier the only way to buy stuff was to either visit the merchant manually, choose and buy your items or order items by mail. With online stores flourishing, most internet savvy people with a credit card now just open up their favorite online shopping portal, browse catalogs, compare items, select the ones they require to be put into the virtual shopping cart and checkout with their credit / debit card. It has become that easy and fast.

Ever wondered how you are charged online and the merchant receives the money without even swiping your credit card on the machine at the sales counter of the store, sitting at the convenience of your home? Well, this is a bit of technical knowhow, but people who visit credit card news and ecommerce sites are probably aware that credit cards have a 3 digit security code (CVV2) on their back. While checking out, you enter your card number and personal details as registered with the card along with your CVV code at the merchant’s website.

Then, the e-commerce application connects to the payment gateway and the concerned bank is queried about the legitimacy and validity of your card. If everything is OK and there’s enough balance on your card to complete the payment, an electronic balance transfer is initiated from your card balance to the merchant account. All these steps usually take a few seconds and a transaction id and status is reported to the merchant which is recorded by the order management system.

Though credit cards have proved to be a boon for customers as well as merchants as an effective payment method, it has some cons too. One of the burning issues in ecommerce and online shopping is credit card fraud. Anti-fraud systems and technologies are constantly being developed and improvised to tighten privacy and security of online buyers and minimize undue charge-backs and losses to merchants due to fraud orders.

Debit or credit cards are quite common ans easily available these days. Almost all adult people in the developed countries have one or more of them. Choosing a card which suits you best is a bit difficult and needs extensive research. Special balance transfer credit cards are now quite popular. If you plan to shop online, always ensure your bank offers some sort of buyer protection for online credit card frauds and helps to resolve them if they ever occur.