The history and evolution of E-commerce

The first extended use of electronic commerce (E-commerce) appears in the early of 1970s when the system call Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) was introduced. The function of EFT is enables the bank and the financial institute to transfer the money over the secure network among themselves or with other associate business. The employers use the EFT to pay their employees’ salary by transferring money to their bank account or debit card.

In the late of 1970s, a new model of system was developed - Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) which enables inter-company exchanges of documents, such as order forms for suppliers, invoices, customs forms, reimbursement receipts, stock inventories and etc. EDI ran on a privately maintained network exclusively dedicated to this system. In parallel, many companies used EDI to run their own private networks which were open to their business partners and acted as information exchange highway. These networks are commonly called VAN (Value - Added Networks).

In the late of 1980s, there are two new applications were widely adopted in the business which are electronic mail (e-mail) and groupware.

In the 1991, there is a significant change for E-commerce due to the United State government allows the public access to the internet. The internet is a global network, which allows the business to search for the new market, this make the internet was quickly accepted in the business transaction. Besides, the World Wide Web that emerged in the years when the internet was liberalized rendered e-commerce both more accessible and more affordable. It enabled small business to sense for the first time the benefits that can be reaped from the technology of E-commerce.

As now, more and more businesses are using the e-commerce to conduct their business such as E-bay and Amazon. In the future, I believe that most of the business transaction will be conduct by the E-commerce due to the continuous development of the technology.