Normal Technologies in E-Commerce

1. Electronic Data Interchange

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the concept of businesses electronically communicating information that was traditionally communicated on paper, such as purchase orders and invoices. Technical standards for EDI exist to facilitate parties transacting such instruments without having to make special arrangements.

EDI has existed at least since the early 70s, and there are many EDI standards (including X12, EDIFACT, ODETTE, etc.), some of which address the needs of specific industries or regions. It also refers specifically to a family of standards. In 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology defined electronic data interchange as “the computer-to- computer interchange of strictly formatted messages that represent documents other than monetary instruments. EDI implies a sequence of messages between two parties, either of whom may serve as originator or recipient. The formatted data representing the documents may be transmitted from originator to recipient via telecommunications or physically transported on electronic storage media.” It distinguished mere electronic communication or data exchange, specifying that “in EDI, the usual processing of received messages is by computer only. Human intervention in the processing of a received message is typically intended only for error conditions, for quality review, and for special situations.

For example, the transmission of binary or textual data is not EDI as defined here unless the data are treated as one or more data elements of an EDI message and are not normally intended for human interpretation as part of online data processing.”

Electronic Data Interchange is used to transmit documents such as orders, bills notices, bills of lading, and certificate of origin, advices and other business mails between the known two trading partners, It is way of substituting electronic transactions for paper ones.
It is not a just substitution it is for increasing reliability, accuracy, efficiency and productivity. For example, the customer may request for a price quotation or for details. The seller sends quotation through electronic network. The buyer places the purchase order.
The seller acknowledges the order and the seller asks for the status enquiry about the buyer. The buyer responds to the status enquiry. After his process, the purchase order is processed and shipping notice is prepared with invoice. As the invoice is sent to the buyer, the payment remittance advice is received from the buyer in the form of accounts receivable or payable. Thus, there is a procedural process in electronic data interchange.

2. Electronic Fund Transfer

Electronic funds transfer (EFT) are electronic transfer of money from one bank account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, via computer-based systems, without the direct intervention of bank staff.
According to the United States Electronic Fund Transfer Act of 1978 it is a funds transfer initiated through an electronic terminal, telephone, computer (including on-line banking) or magnetic tape for the purpose of ordering, instructing, or authorizing a financial institution to debit or credit a consumer’s account.
EFT transactions are known by a number of names across countries and different payment systems.

For example, in the United States, they may be referred to as “electronic checks” or “e-checks”. In the United Kingdom, the term “bank transfer” and “bank payment” are used, while in several other European countries “giro transfer” is the common term.

EFTS include, but are not limited to:

automated teller machine (ATM) transfers;
for payment for goods or services;
direct deposit payment or withdrawals of funds initiated by the payer;
direct debit payments for which a business debits the consumer’s bank accounts
transfers initiated by telephone;
through a payment terminal.
transfers resulting from credit or debit card transactions, whether or not initiated wire transfer via an international banking network such as SWIFT;
electronic bill payment in online banking, which may be delivered by EFT or paper check;
instant payment.
transactions involving stored value of electronic money, possibly in a private currency

Most of the applications you see today, whether web applications like online shopping etc. or on devices, invariantly follow some variation of Client/Server model (architecture).Though we still have few traditional Airlines reservation, scheduling systems hosted on Mainframes(not following C/S model), exposed via other services. In this era of huge data and frequent updates, client on its own, can not hold entire data, it relies on some server, cloud or in-premise.

3. Electronic Mail (E-Mail)

Business activities depend upon the mail system prevailing in the environment.
The orders, acceptances, payments etc., usually depend upon the mail system. To have a comprehensive quick mail system and to have efficient and effective responses, electronic mail is used.
Electronic mail is the way by which the messages are electronically transferred or transmitted without the paper mode.
Network act as the intermediaries and the technologies quicken the process.
There are sender, receiver, coding, decoding etc., as usual, but the specialty is the clarity, reliability and convenience in e-mail system.
There are many security systems for maintaining the reliability. Firewall is the software of the server.
It tracks the information inflow ad outflow from the outer environment to inner environment.