e.com institute, an e-business company which opened its doors at the beginning of this month, has concluded an agreement with CyberSource International to represent its interests in Africa as a CyberSourceMaster Merchant.
The CyberSource relationship underpins the business of e.com institute and provides the secure payment processing backbone for the company and the multitude of merchants it hopes to sign up. Included in the CyberSource international sites are Nike and Beyond.com.
Established by joint managing directors John Berry and Cassim Parak, with partner Paul Yammin, e.com institute has already acquired several high profile e-commerce and security agencies, and is working on other joint ventures to bring to market a focused e-business solution.
Backed up by a team of highly experienced technical and development resources, e.com institute will focus on developing and marketing e-business solutions and establishing an e-commerce trading platform for open and closed communities within consumer and business segments.
In turn, CyberSource, backed by Visa International, provides mission-critical reliability and a suite of merchant-controlled, real-time e-commerce services, including payment processing, global tax calculation, Internet fraud screening, distribution control and fulfillment messaging. It is the only company that provides a Fraud Screen for credit cards, called the Internet Verification System (IVS).
John Berry, joint managing director of e.com institute, explains what the CyberSource product range will bring to South African businesses. "Building, maintaining and understanding payment processing capability can cost businesses thousands of rands and a provider`s minimal infrastructure and bandwidth often result in lengthy processing time, poor reliability and customer dissatisfaction.
"All these factors have a negative impact on the operating and selling efficiencies sought by Web businesses. But, with the CyberSource product, businesses can implement reliable, secure payment processing functionality without bearing the cost of developing and maintaining the complex systems, infrastructure, and overheads otherwise required."
Continues Berry: "Helping merchants screen transactions for possible fraud is an important service that supplements the low-margin business of clearing credit card transactions."
All CyberSource services are accessed via the CyberSource Commerce Component, which provides a secure, remote messaging link between a storefront and CyberSource data centres worldwide. Using this component, services are requested on an as-needed basis in real-time.
The CyberSource Internet Commerce suite provides the back-office services needed to reliably sell digital or physical goods and services in real-time, worldwide and with complete control over storefront operations and business rules. A secure link from the site to CyberSource mission critical data centres delivers all the power you need behind your buy button.
"The additional beauty with CyberSource is that requests are processed in approximately 4-6 seconds, after which results and all original order information are returned to the corporate`s server, eliminating possible security breaches," concludes Berry.
The US-based company originally developed its fraud screening capabilities to combat the high rate of fraudulent transactions for downloadable software, which at times exceeded 80% in unguarded environments.
In 1998, it handled more than 8,3 million online transactions, up from less than one million the year before. And while competition looms from other established payment processors, the additional services that it offers place the company in a unique niche.
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