Web Commerce Security Design and Development

Payment

Payment is one of the cornerstones of any commercial activity, including e-commerce. At the end of a successful commercial exchange the buyer wants to receive his goods and the merchant her money. As humans engaged in commercial activities throughout history, the need to find creative ways to scale and expand it became apparent. Introduction of money into commerce was a major leap toward making commerce scalable and to enable it to expand across the world. In this section, we discuss the foundation of payment, its main component (money), and the mechanics of money movement in modern systems.

Money

Early barter systems did not include a notion of money as it was a more advanced economic (and of course, social) construct that came in later. Money was invented to further facilitate commercial exchange. With the advent of money, humans were able to separate the notion of value from goods, represent it in an abstract form, and use it as an intermediary medium for commerce. Earliest forms of money were themselves material of intrinsic value (usually noble metals such as gold and silver), but the concept of it as an intermediary applies whether or not the medium has value itself. Money enables portability of value, scalability of exchange, and more novel governance and manipulation of value such as saving, investment, and other forms of economic growth. The scientific definition of money and its role in modern economy, in commerce, and in our social fabric are beyond the scope ...