Electronic Currency

E-currency refers to a variety of payment mechanisms used to make payments at retail outlets and over the internet through computer based communication technologies. The Bank for International Settlements has defined electronic currency as the monetary value measured in currency units stored in electronic form on an electronic device in the consumer’s possession. A working definition of e-currency in Malaysian context is taken to include electronic purse initiatives such as MEPS cash and stored value card such as Touch ‘n Go cards.

The first attempt of e-currency implementation in Malaysia was in 1999 with the introduction of MEPS cash in Klang Valley. The facilities to reload the cards with cash was limited, the outlets where MEPS cash was accepted was also few in numbers. However, the situation is quite different today where almost every ATM machine in the country is equipped with the ability to reload MEPS cash.

Another implementing e-currency in Malaysia came in the form of the Touch ‘n Go cards offered by Rangkaian Segar which is a private company. The Touch ‘n Go cards were originally intended for toll payments along the Malaysia highways. The cards may either be linked to ones credit or bank card with automatic reload facilities to a stipulated maximum level once the amount on the cards fall to a predetermined minimum level. The cards can be reloaded at some of the toll booths or at some banks’ ATM terminals. Despite the availability of these cards, it is not surprising to find long queues during peak hours along the cash booths along the local highways. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that today, the Touch ‘n Go cards are also used for other payments such as parking bays, train and bus fares.

Although e-currency can provide many benefits such as convenience and privacy, increased efficiency of transactions, lower transactions fees, and new business opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the Internet, there are many potential issues with the use of e-currency. The transfer of digital currencies raises local issues such as how to levy taxes or the possible ease of money laundering. There are also potential macroeconomic effects such as exchange rate instabilities and shortage of money supplies. These issues may only be addressable by some type of cyberspace regulations or laws that regulate the transactions and watch for signs of trouble.

Review a local E-Commerce site.

Lelong.com is a Malaysian online market that can be accessed by people all over the world. Lelong.com was design for the purpose of auction activities such as bargain, bidding, buying and selling. It allows users to have online internet auction and trading for many types or products or services like electronic products, books, home appliances and so on.

All auctioned and sales products are categorized to allow people who visit and access this website to find information about products easily and then enter into transaction such as buying and selling. There are 30 categories all together in Lelong.com. Categories include beauty and health, books and comics, cars and transport, clothing and accessories, house and property, gifts and premiums, and travel and tours.

The idea of an auction site in Malaysia has taken off with huge good responses, and to stand out among competitors and attract the Malaysian internet users as a whole, Lelong.com has three different language versions – English, Chinese and Malay. Because of good responses from the Malaysia internet users as a whole and the realization of many distributers of the advantages of using an online auction site to trade, Lelong.com is transacting from a Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) relationship to a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) relationship.

Selling System:
Maximum Bid / AutoBid / ProxyBid
Each time you enter a Maximum Bid, your automatic proxy, AutoBid goes to work for you. AutoBid lets you set an upper bidding limit, which is your Maximum Bid, while keeping your actual bids as low as possible. If another party beats your initial bid, AutoBid raises your bid by one single increment more than the challenging bid. This pattern continues until another bidder exceeds your Maximum Bid, or until you win the auction.

Payment channel:
1. Online Credit Card

• Visa / Master

2. Interbank Transfer / Giro / Bank Counter

• Maybank, Alliance Bank

3. E-banking Payment

• Open Bill Payment

4. Cheque payment

5. Cash payment in Lelong office

Things to take note to prevent E-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an E-auction.

User identity verification
This can be done by requesting the user to supply information for on-line verification such as social security number, driving license number, date of birth. E-bay used eBay User program for such purposes.

Authenticate and grading service
Product authentication can be done to verify the product on sale is a genuine product and adhered to the specification. E-bay provides a links for its user to authentication web site for such service.

Feedback forum
Establish a feedback forum to allow registered buyers and sellers to build up their reputations and allows the buyers to provide their comments, such as E-bay feedback forum.

Insurance policy
Provide an insurance coverage to protect the seller and buyer interest, such as ebay offers insurance underwritten by Lyold’s of London and WebTradeInsure.com who provides supplementary insurance.

Escrow services
The buyer and user can obtain an escrow services from the providers such as tradenable.com to protect their interest against frauds such as customers inability to made payments, or sellers inability to ship the goods.

Nonpayment punishment
Imposed a punishment for the buyers who did not honor their winning bids by issuing sterner warning, suspending the users temporary or permanently.

Appraisal services
By providing the user an appraisal services in an on-line mode to appraise the value of the auction item.

Physical inspection
Provides the buyers an inspection services at regional basis by arranging the buyer and sellers to meets and inspect item.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate Blogging is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. Posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Corporate blog includes internal blogs, external blogs and CEO blogs.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog


Example of corporate blog is http://direct2dell.com/one2one/default.aspx. It is a blog about Dell products, services and customers. It is useful in terms of providing information to customers or online users about their latest news. For example, recently Dell has created its new home page by redesigning it. It is focusing on function and beauty of the home page. The other issue is about Dell’s producer is going to recycle and reuse those electronic equipment. Implementation of such corporate blog may make the customers more familiar with the company’s products and services. In addition, the strategy plan can also be known by public. It may boost up the reputation of the company.


There are several advantages of corporate blogging. It may provide space where interpretations and different points of view come up so that the any member of the organization can discuss and debate them. It provides a useful communication tools for member of organization to voice out their comment and helps increase member commitment. Besides, it helps in improving participation spirit, collaboration, and the capabilities of team learning. It is also useful to promote dialogue and find lateral ideas outside the team.


On the other hand, it leads to the sharing of information, which could be harmful for employees or the company. There are cases where a company has been held responsible for comments made by some employees that adversely affected the others. Moreover, some employees may use the blog to write negatively about the company, leading to bad publicity.

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Most of the people now are holding at least one credit card in their hand. Credit card is a type of “post-paid” payment method that enables the card holder purchase 1st then makes payment later. For example visa card and master card. It is very convenient as the card holder does not need to bring a lot of cash out to buy a particular thing. However, due to its convenient and it is a post paid service, there is huge amount of credit card debts that owed by the card holders.


What are the causes of credit card debts? For most of the card holders who are over 21 years old, the big reason is they use their cards without anticipating how the bills will be paid off. Normally, they will spend more than what they can earn. When the credit card bill comes and the holder is unable to pay the bill, he or she will postpone the payment of the bill. This will cause the amount due become more and more because of the interest charged. For the people who always do not consider well before purchasing, it is easier to cause a huge amount of debts.

Thus, prevention is better than cure the credit card debts. Firstly, get a credit card that has the lowest interest rate possible so that you do not need to pay higher interest charged. Secondly, do not always depend on the credit card and get use on it. If can, use cash to purchase and only use the credit card in emergency. Besides that, do not buy anything that you cannot afford and useless.


There are many cases of credit card debts caused the holders become “bankrupt” and commit suicide due to unable to pay off the debts. Thus, better consider carefully before purchasing anything by using credit card.

E-Government in Malaysia: Its Implementation So Far and Citizen’s Adoption Strategies.

E- Government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Network, Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. As far as Malaysia is concerned, the implementation of e-government was initiated with the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in 1996 and in the survey, Malaysia’s ranking is 25^th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth.

The implementation of e-government in Malaysia heralds the beginning of a journey of reinventing the government by transforming the way it operates, modernizing and enhancing its service delivery. E-government seeks to enhance the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with the public and businesses at large. Simultaneously, it will improve information flow processes within the government, improve the speed and quality of policy development, and improve coordination and enforcement. This would enable the government more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

There are seven main projects were indentified to be the core of the e-government applications under the e-government flagship:

i) Electronic Procurement (eP)

ii) Project Monitoring System (PMS)

iii) Electronic Services Delivery (eServices)

iv) Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

v) Generic Office Environment (GOE)

vi) E-Syariah

vii) Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

Citizen’s Adoption Strategies.

Generally, new technologies are forcing governments to be particularly attentive to time. In order to make the right decisions and avoid falling behind, government must identify and resolve the different issues that have arisen from the transition period during which traditional and e-government co-exist. Rather than just focusing on introduction of ICTs, government should decide on, guide and control the transformation of government into e-government. The use of ICT to strengthen the involvement of citizens and businesses in public decision-making must progress at the same time. In conclusion, implementing good strategies must be addressed carefully. Otherwise, e-government will remain a misleading, cosmetic operation.

The Application Of Pre-Paid cash card for consumers.

The prepaid card is far from a new idea. The concept is basically the same as a prepaid gift card or a mobile phone SIM card and it focuses on making payments fast, easy and convenient without the hassle of preparing for small change or bringing large amount of cash in hand. A prepaid cash card looks like a credit or debit card. It gives the users the ability to purchase products and services with a card, but only up to a certain limit, which is the amount the user has preloaded into the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility.



One of the prepaid cards available in Malaysia is the Touch-n-Go card. The Touch-n-Go is most commonly used pay highway tolls, public bus and trains fares, selected parking sires and theme park. Recently, the card’s functions have expanded to include making payments at A&W, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donut, 7-Eleven and the Carrefour hypermarkets.

note : http://www.touchngo.com.my/WhatTNG.html

When using for purchasing retail products and services, they work exactly the same way as a credit or debit card. Just simply hand over the card and for authorization, you will be asked to either enter your PIN number (supplied with the card) on an electronic keypad or to sign a payment slip for signature verification which is to be compared and matched to that on the back of the card (if there is no Chip on the card). The total amount will be minus off from the card immediately and thus, the transaction is completed.

To shop online, once you have decided to purchase the product, all you need to do is to fill in your prepaid card details. As long as there is enough cash preloaded into your card, the purchase transaction will be allowed and your item will be shipped to you.

One can simply start using prepaid cash card when money has been loaded on to a prepaid card by cash at a bank, Post Office, at Payzone or PayPoint terminals, bank transfer, through your employer or even by credit card.

Application of pre-paid cash card for consumers includes :

• Buying groceries and petrol


• As a replacement for travellers cheques or travel cash for a low cost alternative to paying for goods and services abroad


• Topping up your mobile phone


• Internet shopping including eBay


• Paying bills


• People who wish to use foreign currency on a holiday


• Newly arrived immigrant, who although already earning, cannot yet obtain credit due to having no credit footprint in the UK


• A person who has a poor credit rating or a history of bad debt who cannot get a credit card