电子商务英语 第二版 unit4.docVIP

Unit4 Payment of Electronic Commerce 学习指导： 本章将介绍： ·网上结算的优势 ·电子结算的方式 ·结算卡 ·电子现金 ·电子钱包 ·储值卡 ·互联网技术与银行业 4.1 Online Payment Basics An important function of electronic commerce sites is the handling of payments over the Internet. Most electronic commerce involves the exchange of some form of money for goods or services. In this chapter, you will learn about a number of online payment alternatives that are available to individual consumers. 4.1.1 the Advantages Online payment systems for consumer electronic commerce are still evolving. A number of proposals and implementations of payment systems currently compete for dominance. Regardless of format, electronic payments are far cheaper than mailing paper checks. Electronic payments can be convenient for customers and can save companies money. Estimates of the cost of billing one person by mail range between $1 and $1.50. Sending bills and receiving payments over the Internet can drop the transaction cost to an average of 50 cents per bill. The total savings is huge when the unit cost is multiplied by the number of customers who could use electronic payment. For example, a telephone company in a major metropolitan area might have 5 million customers, each of whom receives a bill every month. In one year, a savings of 50 cents on each of those 60 million bills adds up to about $30 million. The environmental impact is also significant. Those 60 million paper bills weigh about 1.7 million pounds. It takes 2200 trees to make that much paper-along with the energy consumed and the wastes generated in the paper-making process. 4.1.2 Today, four basic ways to pay for purchases dominate both traditional and electronic business-to-consumer commerce. Cash, checks, credit cards, and debit cards account for more than 90 percent of all consumer payments in the United States. A small but growing percentage of consumer payments are made by electronic transfer. The most popular consumer electronic transfers are automated payments of auto