From the past few years, e-commerce has come to claim an ever larger part of our lives. For many of us, shopping or buying goods ranging from daily needs to luxuries no longer involves driving to malls miles away and fighting the crowds. Instead, we prefer going to our PCs or smartphones to shop to our heart’s content. None of this would be made possible without e-commerce.
While the era of online shopping is still developing and capturing the customers’ mindset rapidly, there have been new inventions in the e-commerce space that has necessitated developments in technologies that bind the various vital components of e-commerce systems together as a functioning unit. No doubt, the payment gateways are the backbone for transactions; there has always been a demand of more secure, less dependent systems that smoothens the process of paying for what you buy instantly!
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is changing the landscape of money transaction from the bank account to the business entity. When a customer makes a purchase on a business’ website, they can choose to have the purchase price taken from their bank account as opposed to a credit or debit card. Once the EFT process has been started on the business’ website, the funds will be taken from the customer’s bank account a few days later. Also there have been advancements in Online Transaction Processing, where capital firms are giving online merchants an advance on future credit card orders, which allows the business of e-commerce to operate smoothly.

Enablers of e-commerce
Internet marketing is another broad area enabling the e-commerce business comprising anything a business does online to attract more customers. In the past few years, Internet marketing has expanded to include technologies involving search engine mechanisms. In this vein, practices such as search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and banner ads are examined for their rates of efficacy.
Automated Data Collection systems are another important arm of the e-commerce technology area. Online retail businesses use automated data collection systems that allow them to gather information about prospective and current customers. This information allows online businesses to figure out the buying, browsing and online search habits of customers, which businesses then use to tailor targeted advertising to prospective consumers.
In the not-too-distant future, e-commerce technology not only will become smarter and faster, but could completely transform the way companies deal with internal information and customer service.
Moreover, technologies in the pipeline – such as interactive company portals that can communicate with other portals in real-time – could drastically alter the
sales process.