The history and evolution of e-commerce

E-commerce was first developed in the early 1970s with innovation such as electronic funds transfer (EFT), whereby funds routed electronically from one organization to another. E-commerce grew steadily throughout the 1980’s. It was during the time people started to use credit cards on a regular basis. However, the term ‘e-commerce’ was not referring to the type of business that we know today. For most people, the term refers to transactions, which take place completely through the web. When you search for an item on sites such as eBay or Amazon and then pay with credit card or online banking, you are conducting e-commerce that most people think of when the term comes up. That was not possible until the average person began to use the Internet in the 1990’s.

Two things happened in the mid-1990 to make this kind of e-commerce a possibility. First, computer security was strengthened enough to make consumers and businesses feel comfortable when conducting these types of transactions online. Second, the average people are more familiar with the web and started using it for daily activities such as online shopping. In 1995, Amazon.com was launched and we really started seeing the type of e-commerce that we are used to today.

However, there are several factors that inhibited the growth of the online business currently. For example, there are many people did not have high speed Internet in their homes, so online shopping tended to be limited to what could be done in the workplace. Additionally, many small businesses invested too much money in creating a web presence and they were not able to sustain that development due to lack of funds. At the turn of the twenty first century, the dot-com bust happened and many of these businesses went broke.

Year	Event
1984	EDI, or electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.
1992	Compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.
1994	Netscape arrived. Providing users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.
1995	Two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched: Amazon.com and eBay.com.
1998	DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money, online.
1999	Retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion, according to Business.com.
2000	The U.S government extended the moratorium on Internet taxes until at least 2005.