Review on Lelong.com.my

The local e-commerce website is the Lelong at www.lelong.com.my which is a pioneer auction website in Malaysia that provide online trading at a low cost. This e-commerce site had developed from Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) transactions to become Business-to-Consumer (B2C) relationships. Many people have realised the usefulness of using the auction system and are now using our site to trade and grow their business. Approximately 70% of all items posted for auction on our site are sold. So, all users get a chance of obtaining a successful transaction.

Moreover, the interface is very user-friendly and easy to use. The speed of accessing the website is depends on the internet speed that subscribed by the users. Lelong has provides many types of products, such as personal care, books, jewellery and accessories, watches, pens and clocks, clothing, electronic products and etc. It had properly classified all the items in the website which is very convenient to all the users to browse their favorable items. This site even displays the pictures of the items that need to be trade and the price as well. The website is more structured and it is in different languages that can be choosing according to the users’ preference. Furthermore, the buyer wants to get what they pay for and the seller wants to get paid, the Lelong Safetrade can manage every aspects of the settlement process and remove risk from online transaction.

The shopping carts in Lelong are well equipping with the information needed by the buyer which contains others products’ details such as payment methods or shipping method. Moreover, the buyer can search the products that they want easily and the website provides a forum where all the users can share their opinions or any queries.

Most of the Malaysian are prefer to use Lelong.com.my as local E-Commerce site to trade or market their products or services due to it is more convenient compares to physical shops, where it do not need any physical place to store all the products. Furthermore it helps the users to choose more wisely because they can compares the prices before they purchase it or even they can bargain on it.

For further information, click on the links below;

• www.lelong.com.my

• http://help.lelong.com.my/cms/

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen’s adoption strategies

In 1997, the Malaysian Government launched the Electronic Government initiative, generally known as e-Government, to reinvent itself to lead the country into the information age. The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens.

The e-Government projects are Electronic Procurement (eP), Project Monitoring System (PMS), Electronic Services Delivery (eServices), Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS), Generic Office Environment (GOE), E-Syariah and Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX).

Other than these seven main projects under e-government flagships, several government agencies has also initiated online services for the public projects, aims to increase the ease and efficiency of public service to the people. Among others were Public Services Portal (myGovernment), e-Tanah, e-Consent, e-Filing, e-Local Government (e-PBT), e-Kehakiman, Custom Information System (SMK), Pensions Online Workflow Environment (POWER), and Training Information System (e-SILA).One of the most successful applications is e-filling.

However, there is slow adoption of E-Government applications due to lack of integration and insufficient engagement of key stakeholders (especially users and citizens). This is because public are not aware of the services. Besides, there is a language barrier because most of the government websites are using Bahasa Malaysia. This may be a problem since some users are more comfortable to using other language like English and Chinese. Next is the issue of privacy and security because users maybe worry about their private personal data and the tax return can see by others.

Suggest ways to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications. Firstly, government can organize some activities to introduce the e government application and teach the citizen how to use the e government application. For example, increase awareness through TV and radio advertisements, and organizing workshops at shopping malls. Next, government should provide websites with multiple language versions. Finally, government should improve the security and privacy application of e-government to make sure the data will not hack by the hacker.

For more information, visit the link below;

www.gov.my

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potential and consumers' adoption strategies.

Nowadays, there is high potential for mobile telecommunication networks to become an important electronic payment channel in our country as mobile phone services will make life easier for everyone. Mobile payment system is a system using mobile devices to make monetary transactions such as pay bills, perform banking transactions or shop online beyond voices.

In Malaysia there are several companies that already launched mobile payment systems such as Celcom, Maxis, Digi, TMtouch, Maybank, Hong Leong Bank, Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd, and mobileExec Sdn Bhd.

Celcom (Malaysia) Berhad, Malaysia's premier mobile network with the widest coverage, and paybox, the trendsetting company for mobile payment solutions, will be launching a mobile Banking & mobile Payment solution for the Malaysian market. Mobile Banking (m-banking) and mobile Payment (m-payment) in Malaysia provide real-time banking and payment instructions that enable customers access to their current e-banking systems using a Java client on their phone. It allows customers to access their accounts at any bank, at a minimal investment by the participating banks. Besides, Celcom will expand the system to include other partners and provide extended remittance, bill payment and merchant payment services.

As for consumers shop and pay via mobile phones, Visa International collaborated with Nokia Corporation had introduce the world's first credit card payment pilot system in Malaysia recently, called "Mobile Visa Wave Payment Pilot". The backbone of the mobile payment system is Visa Wave smart card technology. The technology is equipped with sophisticated radio frequencies that eliminate the need to swipe credit cards into a reader. The service will be available on the Nokia 3230 prototype phone. Users will be able to use the phones to make payments in 2,500 outlets equipped with Visa Wave readers. Nokia's business development senior manager Risto Sipila expects such services to become more popular as, mobile phone users worldwide are likely to go up to 3 billion by 2008. It is because visa is using a specialized chip with the latest cryptography, security and smart card technologies which making the system extremely secure and forging difficult.

MobileExec currently provides premium rate SMS messaging across the all major Malaysian carriers. In the Malaysia, premium rate SMS and reverse billing services are regulated by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). Such services are developing fast in the Europe and recently in Malaysia. It provides customers with admission or money off vouchers which can be unique coded or designed to allow viral spread. The mobile payment gateway service covers all mobile operators on Malaysia, with support for prepaid and postpaid service billings. Those packages include the following:

• Project Planning and Management Services


• Product Catalogue Submission (to all mobile operators)


• Premium Billing System Configuration


• Systems and Load Testing


• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) will all mobile networks


• Service Launch


• Monthly Service Monitoring and Progress Report


• Settlement Reports, collections from mobile operators
  

In short, the mobile payment system is easier, more cost-effective and more convenient for consumers, merchants and service-providers to execute and receive payments. Furthermore, mobile payment is safe and secure. It allows people to make payment at anytime from anywhere with just one SMS. It also allows people to receive money from anyone at anytime. As for merchants, business can be done anywhere such as conduct billing. There will be increased business opportunities for merchants as remote mobile payment can be done easily with the lower transaction and maintenance cost.

Electronic Currency

Electronic currency also called E-micro payment which is the digital equivalent of paper currency and coins which enables secure and anonymous purchase of low-priced items. It also refers to the money or scrip which is exchanged electronically. Normally, it involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. It also a collection term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

Electronic currency has been widely used throughout the world on an institutional level for more than two decades. Today, nearly all of the deposit currencies in the world’s banking systems are handled electronically though a series of computer network.

E-micro payment systems include BitPass, Firstgate’s Click and Buy, PayLoadz, Paystone, Peppercoin, Beenz, Digicash and also Flooz. Thus, I’m choosing Peppercoin to be discussed.

Peppercoin is an innovative payment platform allowing consumers to use credit or debit cards for small transantions. Peppercoin’s systems are designed to be deployed as part of the banking and payment processing infrastructure. It is a small and micro payment processing solution that is highly compatible with existing payment products.

Peppercoin system was developed by Silvio Micali and also Ron Rivest. It was first presented on 2002 at RSA Conference. Peppercoin itself is not in the business of distributing content to users. It has developed the Peppercoin Small Payment Gateway a payment system that enables digital content distributors to sell content to users profitably at very low price.

Peppercoin solves the problem of the financial cost of transactions by dramatically reducing the cost of processing low-value transactions, thereby enabling new, financially sustainable, content distribution models, including those for the college and university marketplace.

Through a patent-pending process of cryptographically secure selection of digital payments, Peppercoin processing low-value transactions, reducing the volume of transactions that must be processed by a third-party payment processor or financial institution. Peppercoin states that their approach requires far less overhead than traditional transaction, based on RSA digital signatures to process and protect customer payment.