Talking to experienced Internet-users you frequently hear something like: “Hmm.. WebMoney? Yeah, I heard something about it. But I don’t know anything in particular”. I think that many of my visitors would answer like this, too. However, I hope that I will manage to cast some light on these questions.

Electronic payment system WebMoney Transfer (or just WebMoney) appeared in November, 1998. Its office is situated in Moscow (113035, Moscow city, Sadovnicheskaya st. apt #71). All the details you cab get on the system’s official site.

WebMoney, like, any other electronic payment system, is very convenient for performing monetary operations via Internet. The main advantage of it is, perhaps, its instantaneousness. You just press the button- and after a couple of seconds addressee receives the money. Generally, there are a lot of benefits in using WebMoney:

• You get the money without leaving home.
• Distances don’t matter. Even if the payer is thousand miles away - no problems occur.
• Operation happens in a matter of seconds.
• The scant commission (0,8%)
• Multi-level protection and payment confirmation.

Today WebMoney territory covers- 3205 regions of 42 countries of the world (http://geo.webmoney.ru/aspx/GeoMain.aspx) and has more then 2 million users.

Registration in the System

You need to register and to set up a “wallet”, first, to become a participant of WebMoney.

In order for this, you need to install on your computer a special program, with the help of which the operations will take place. This software in called Webmoney Keeper. You can download the self-extracting installation archive program for free from the WebMoney website.

Input of Money

We came up to the main questions:

Where to get money?

How to fill up your WebMoney wallet?

First of all, you can get them the very usual way – from other users of the system- as a payment for the service or just as a present.

In order to get WM- money from other user you need to let him know your wallet number, on which the money will be transferred; or you need just to expose him the bill. To expose the bill, select the Outgoing accounts-> Write out from the Keeper menu and enter the needed information. If your partner confirms the received bill, stated amount will be taken off from his wallet and then transferred to yours. However, you don’t always manage to get WMZ in this way.

What other variants are there?

1. Bank wire transfer.

You can insert money to WebMoney, after taking them off from your bank account.

To do this, right –click on the “Wallets” inset the wallet you want to replenish, then select the Replenish item, input the amount that you want to set up on your wallet, and then press Order.

The page will be loaded in the browser window. Click on the Via Bank Transfer. Follow the instructions on the screen. The system will generate the banking payment errand, which you can print out. Take this paper to the bank and transfer the needed amount from your account to the WebMoney system’s bank account.

2. Via Savings bank(only for R-wallet).

The procedure is similar to that, which is described above, but you will need to select Via Savings bank.

3. Via Postal Transfer(only with R-wallet).
The procedure is similar to that, which is described above, but you will need to select Via Postal Transfer (not the best option- the percent is a little high).

4. With the help of WM-card.

This card is resemble to those scratch-cards used for Internet access or those cards used for the updating of mobile operator account. Acquiring this card, perform the following actions: on the “Wallets” inset, right click on the wallet, that you want to update, then select the Replenish item, enter any amount, and click on the “Order”. In the browser window the page will be loaded. Click on “Via pre-paid card”. After that, enter the requisites of purchased card- its number and 16-digit code. Press the Replenish. The face-value of the wallet will be enrolled to your wallet.

Highly convenient way, but not in every city this card can be freely purchased.

5. Via exchange points of WebMoney.

Exchange points already exist, apparently, in every big city of CIS countries. In order to transfer cash to the WebMoney wallet, you have to come to the exchange points office in your city (if, of course, there are any), let us know the number of your wallet and the amount for the transfer. Majority of exchange points , however, work on the whole territory of the country and carry out the exchange not only via cash, but, for example, also via bank transfer.

All of the above makes WebMoney one of the best systems to use in dealings with Post Soviet and Eastern European Countries, as it's made to be widely used in the region and it does work.

Besides CIS and Eastern European countries, WebMoney has it's offices in such countries as USA, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Japan, Greece, Israel, France, UAE (http://geo.webmoney.ru/aspx/GeoMain.aspx) etc.

Today, when the E-Business is developing rapidly, there exist numerous E-Payment providers throughout the world, providing their customers with 24-hour access to their money.

You probably saw a number of advertisements on the Internet about certain payment providers that are international companies dealing with e-Payments. However, there is a number of such providers that recommended themselves in particular country or region in the word.

Talking about some leading European payment providers, Pago eTransaction Services plays a big role in European E-Payments. Pago eTransaction Services GmbH (Cologne, Germany) is an international Acquiring & Payment Service Provider for E-Commerce businesses, shops (point-of-sale) and mail-order business. Pago enables its clients to receive payments for their goods and services securely and fast through electronic channels.

The integration of credit card acquiring and payment processing enables Pago to allow businesses of all shapes and sizes to use all internationally and nationally relevant payment methods. The range of payment methods includes Visa and MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, JCB, Switch/Solo as well as locally used direct debit methods. Pago is also a licensed Visa and MasterCard acquirer for Europe - from Finland to Malta, from Ireland to Turkey, including all the new states of the European union.

Moreover, one of the most trusted payment providerin UK, Word Pay is an important part of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the 5th biggest banking group in the world, WorldPay payment solutions are trusted by thousands of businesses, big and small in UK and other countries. Their customers accept payments over the internet, by phone, fax and mail. They accept Visa, MasterCard, Diners, American Express, JCB and all the major credit cards. Not forgetting debit cards and local payment schemes like Switch, Laser, Electron and more.

Another UK’s largest payment provider is SECPay. It is independently owned processor of secure, real-time, online credit and debit card transactions. Specialising in the provision of payment services for merchants on the Internet, through Call Centres and for Mail Order Fulfilment Houses. SECPay handles the capture, authorisation and settlement of credit and debit card payments and all the associated electronic and physical security required.

Considering some international payment providers, Authorize.Net, one of the leading US and international payment providers, manages the submission of payment transactions to the processing networks on behalf of its merchant customers. Since 1996, Authorize.Net has been a leading provider of Internet Protocol (IP) based payment gateway services, enabling merchants to authorize, settle and manage credit card and electronic check transactions from a Web site, retail store, mail order/telephone order (MOTO) call center or mobile device.

One of the examples of those “unversal” payment providers is VeriSign. VeriSign is a global enterprise with offices throughout the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Latin America, and North America, supported by a widespread international network of data centers and operations centers.As next-generation networks emerge, VeriSign will be there, deploying the intelligent infrastructure services necessary for everything from RFID supply chains, to inter-enterprise voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to the seamless delivery of mobile content.

LinkPoint International promises service, technology, and reliability to the merchants that depend on when they use LinkPoint International’s integrated system of point-of-sale (POS) terminals, Internet and wireless products. Regardless of how or where a transaction is initiated, LinkPoint processes it faster, more securely and more cost-effectively than anyone else.

And the last international payment provider I want to tell you about now is Paypal. This company enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online. PayPal's service builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards and utilizes the world's most advanced proprietary fraud prevention systems to create a safe, global, real-time payment solution.

All financial systems attract fraudsters and embezzlers. The problem typically ranges from individuals avoiding small payments or stealing small amounts to organized criminal activities involving large sums. Electronic financial systems connected to public networks extend the opportunities for this type of crime over what is achievable under a paper-based process by allowing access from anywhere in the world often with much scope for anonymity.

Also there can occur a problem, when a merchant sells electronic goods or services (eg. electronic documents or access facilities), and an unauthorised access to the merchant server will allow the taking of the goods or services without payment. This situation pertains regardless of whether the agency outsources the merchant function or performs it in-house. The threat is both from the merchant’s employees and from hackers from outside the merchant’s facility
The major measures which can be used to reduce this risk include:

1. strong access control, both physical and logical, to prevent employees from compromising the system;
2. firewall to stop hackers from outside;
3. security incident detection software and procedures; and
4. good auditing procedures.

If the merchant collects the client’s payment instructions (credit card numbers, etc) the details are necessarily held in the merchant’s computing system, albeit transitorily in some cases. This leaves these details vulnerable to an attack by anyone who can gain access to the merchant’s system.

Protective measures would normally include strong internal access control, firewalling, and security incident detection arrangements. Alternatively, and in most cases better, the details can be passed directly to the Payment Provider without passing through the merchant’s system, or protocol such as Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) might be used. In the latter case the details are encrypted when in the merchant’s possession and the merchant does not hold the key.

An agency acting as its own payment provider will necessarily have unencrypted client details. Particularly stringent access controls will need to be in place to protect them. In addition to the protection given the merchant server, the following may be necessary:

• Firewalling between the merchant server (through which the client details should only pass in encrypted form) and the payments server;

• Strong personnel, physical, and logical control on access to the payment server;
• The use of trusted components (see Miscellaneous Note 1 below) in an independently evaluated and certified system [Commonwealth agencies are strongly advised to contact DSD; other agencies their own security authorities].

Suggestions that the clients’ credit card numbers should be stored truncated or encrypted are useful but inadequate. An attacker could always intercept them on receipt: they must be complete and unencrypted, if only transitorily. There seems some merit in agencies avoiding this situation. Private providers will undoubtedly insure against liabilities resulting from any failure in their security measures.

To sum up, there are numerous E-Payment Providers today, and each of them offers difference services and benefits to user. That’s why it is important to consider the security issues when choosing a right Payment Providers. I hope this article cast some light on the security criteria when choosing a E-Payment Provider.

This article provides you with information about what things you should be concerned when choosing you Payment Provider. In present days, when a lot of personal information is being circulation through the channels of E-Payment Providers, the security has become a major topic of concern. That’s why, talking about the security in Payment Providers Systems, you should take into consideration such issue as privacy, anonymity, encryption technologies, and Electronic Authentication and Authorization.

Privacy: New technologies have radically advanced freedoms of people, but they gave also enabled unparalleled invasions of privacy. By logging your online activities, the E-Business companies are creating a honeypot of personal information, potentially available to any party wielding a subpoena. That’s why when choosing a Payment Provider, one of the most important parts is to make sure that the Payment Provider protects you privacy. However, today, when numerous laws on Internet privacy have passed, more and more companies tend to provide a good privacy protection in order not to lose their customers.

Anonymity: Many people don't want the things they say online to be connected with their offline identities. For these individuals and the organizations the Payment Providers’ Secure Anonymity service is critical.

In the communication between the service provider and the user, encryption technology is very important, because it is used to encrypt the messages and to provide them with MACs (message authentication codes), which are programmed to change constantly. This prevents an outsider from viewing or altering the transmitted data. Considering this, there is a number of encryption algorithms that are designed for the security of the system, they are: Public Key Algorithms, and Secret Key Algorithms.

A different kind of key is used by the Public key algorithms for both: the encryption and decryption. In addition, the descriptive key cannot be practically “taken off” from the encryption key. The importance of public key methods is in the ability to transmit encryption keys or other data securely, even if two parties didn’t privately agree on a secret key. Since many well-knows encryption methods are slow, they are more often used to encrypt so-called session keys, which are “randomly generated ‘normal’ keys”. So those keys are used for the encryption of the bulk of the data, applying the same cipher. Some examples: RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) - considered to be secure; Diffie-Hellman - a well-known public-key algorithm for key exchange.

Secret key algorithms use the same key for both encryption and decryption (or the other is easily derivable from the other. Some examples of Secret Key Algorithms: DES - s a block cipher with 64-bit block size; Blowfish - a block cipher with 64-bit block size and variable length keys; IDEA (International Data Encryption Algorithm)- a 128 bit key, and it is generally considered to be very secure.

Electronic authentication (E-authentication) is the process of establishing the fact that the on line user is a right customer, thus his identities are presented electronically right. That’s why E-authentication faces some technical challenges for the electronic government and commerce when such process is being done remotely by someone on the network.

The E-Commerce, obviously, is a new field of current business that is being developed daily. No wonder that new Hi-tech solutions are being brought into the E-Commerce. For instance, today numerous customers of E-payment providers’ have an opportunity to do their E-Business right via their cell phone- WAP technology made this feature possible.

E-payment via WAP is a one-to-one copy of e-payment via Internet. The e-payment code is converted into WML (Wireless Markup Language). All communication and WAP protocols are transmitted through Nordea’s gateway. Payments can only be made through Nordea’s gateway, but other services can be accessed through other gateways.

Secondly, as the popularity of on-line shopping grows, the need for “widen” the Internet market’s e-payment system has risen as well. However, according to the consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., this kind of market will be dominated by relatively major “players”. According to that consultant’s estimates, it is expected that market to grow to more that 40 billion $ in 2010. Moreover, according to those estimates, they also expect the user fess to become lower because of capturing “greater market share”. Therefore, an example to this may be that it will be required such big retailers as Amazon.com Inc by giving relatively big discounts.

Over time, the e-payment services of these companies could become a major competitor to credit cards and debit cards, both used to pay for more than 90 percent of goods and services on the Internet today, according to Booz Allen Hamilton.

According to a recent survey, which was conducted by the National Multi-Housing Council (NMHC), property owners and managers ranked electronic RENT COLLECTION SOFTWARE as the no. 1 feature they would like to see in the upgrades of the programs they are using in the present time. This is not a wonder: E-Payment, according to the same article, is convenient for users. Moreover, it can bring considerable savings to property mangers.

Starting offering this kind of offer to the customers, the multifamily firms realized that the technology poses a number of serious challenges. For instance; integrating e-payment systems with existing PROPERTY MANAGEMENT  seems to be difficult to do. In addition, Visa USA Inc. recently started suppressing transaction fees, which some property owners pass on to the customers who use that kind of Credit Cards.
However, E-payment providers are no willing to waste the time dealing with those kinds of concerns

E-payment providers, however, are wasting no time in addressing these and other concerns, so they tend to quickly upgrade their features as well as functionality for the reason that they don’t want to lose their customers, or to risk not getting their share of quickly growing new ones. 

Industry observers tend to believe Rent as a next e-payment revolution feature. And the customers’ demand is not only reason for this.

However, numerous property managers are waiting their investments to return. The problem consists of two parts. Relatively smaller e-payment providers often don’t seem to devote required recourses to creating software, which unseeingly integrates with a variety of property management systems in use. Secondly, some relatively large management companies carry on using old DOS-based systems, which are not as flexible as new Web-based platforms.

The volume of electronic payment transactions for all goods and services recently surpassed that of paper checking, according to the Federal Reserve. As consumers put away their checkbooks, they are using online checking (also known as automated clearinghouse, or ACH, transactions), debit cards and credit cards to pay for everything from food and entertainment, to utility bills and mortgages.

Some e-payment providers will custom design products to ensure clients have seamless data integration and reporting. But other firms, such as RentPayment, are choosing to simply acquire companies that have already developed more flexible platforms. Even as e-payment software evolves, unexpected events can force technology providers and property managers alike to change their business practices.

To sum up, today’s E-Business world is being upgraded every day so that E-Payment Provider customers have a wide-range of opportunities to do their business electronically. Undoubtedly, even if this system is relatively young, E-Commerce is the technology of the future- the thing proving that is the fact that more and more people today prefer their e-Wallet to the “material” ones.