Apache Server for Windows Little Black Book:Electronic Commerce Schemes
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Electronic Payment Systems
Several vendors have developed systems that either facilitate or replace credit card transactions online. Some of these systems are described in the following sections.


WARNING!  The disadvantage of using such systems is that they only work with customers who have set up accounts with banks that support the system in question. This narrows the market considerably. Before you can start using DigiCash’s ecash, you will need a bank account with a bank that issues ecash, for instance. In order to use MilliCent, you and your customers need to have a MilliCent account.

CyberCash
CyberCash (www.cybercash.com) provides some of the most widely used payment options on the Internet and claims to have half a million customers. CyberCash’s CashRegister system isn’t really an alternative to credit card payments; instead, it uses SSL and Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) standards to make it easier for merchants to accept and verify credit card purchases at their site. See the Immediate Solutions section of this chapter for an example of how to set up CyberCash on your site.
Electronic Cash
Services such as DigiCash and MilliCent provide an alternative to credit card purchases over the Internet. Rather than transmitting sensitive data from one site to another and protecting the information with SSL encryption, these services allow merchants and customers to exchange “virtual cash,” commonly referred to as electronic cash or ecash. All participants need to have accounts set up at institutions that support the payment system they want to use. When purchases are made and the virtual currency (DigiCash calls this ecash and MilliCent calls it scrip) is exchanged, the financial institutions handle the transfer of “real” money in the background, not using the Internet. See the Immediate Solutions section for information on how you, as a merchant, can enable your site to use these services.

WARNING!  Shortly before this book went to press, DigiCash announced it was entering into a Chapter 11 reorganization to “allow it to pursue strategic alternatives for its electronic cash products and the associated intellectual assets.” The immediate future of DigiCash and ecash is uncertain, but it is still discussed throughout this chapter because the ecash option DigiCash presents is good for you to know about when considering electronic payment alternatives. For more information on DigiCash, visit its Web site at www.digicash.com.

Micropayments
Micropayments are small units of currency that are exchanged by merchants and customers. The amounts involved might range from one-tenth of one cent to only a few dollars. Such small payments enable sites to provide content for sale on a per-click basis. To read articles, listen to music files, or view video clips online, a user must submit micropayments (perhaps a few cents to read a single article from an archive, for example) that are automatically subtracted from his or her account. These systems, such as MilliCent and CyberCash’s CyberCoin, are particularly useful to software developers who want to accept moderate shareware fees for their products.
Immediate Solutions
Becoming A CyberCash Merchant
CyberCash is an enhancement to the site of a merchant who is already using a secure server, has a merchant account, and wants to accept credit card payments online. The advantage of CyberCash is that it verifies and processes credit card information for you; you do not have to purchase a credit card terminal or special software to do the processing.

Most of the CyberCash CashRegister software resides on CyberCash’s Web site. When a customer wants to make a purchase, you process his or her data by connecting to the site. To make use of the Cash-Register software, you need to install a Merchant Connection Kit (MCK) on your Windows NT computer (a Windows 95/98 version was not available at the time this book was written).

TIP:  The MCK requires software to be set up on your system, as described in the following steps. CyberCash recommends that you have a merchant account application in progress (or that you already have an account) before you set up the MCK. The MCK requires 5MB of disk space for the program itself and 1MB for the log files.





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