The History and Evolution of E-commerce

E-commerce has tremendously developed over years. It can be defined as the action of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging goods and services through the use of internet. During past years, it was made possible to do shopping online and since then, many businesses started to venture into this approach called E-commerce. People can do shopping easily at anywhere, anytime through the internet.

In the early 1970s, the development of e-commerce applications stated with the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), which refers to the computer-based systems used to perform financial transactions electronically from one organization to another. In order to improve the limitation of EFT, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was then developed which used to transfer routine documents and facilitating business transactions electronically. In the 1980s, electronic commerce was also formed by the growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking.

Netscape arrived in 1994, in which the Secure Sockets Layer provides users a simple browser to surf the internet and have a safe online transaction. Amazon.com and eBay.com were launched in 1995. During the 2000s, the e-commerce has changed the process of business transactions through internet using electronic payments services and secures connection. At the end of 2001, the B2B of e-commerce has made a $70billion in transactions. The chart showed that the e-commerce sales amount to 3.4% of the total sales in 2007.


Amazon and eBay were the first International companies that implemented electronic transaction. Both are well-known for its clear and user-friendly advanced search facility which it enables visitors to search keywords in the full text of many products in the database. People are now enjoying the buying and selling advantages of the internet. According to statistics, it showed that music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics are the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web.

In conclusion, the evolution of e-commerce will never end but continuing to improve in order to meet the customer needs. It also enables entrepreneurs to transform their unique ideas into organizational successful business. In addition, history of ecommerce is a history of a new, virtual world which is evolving according to the customer advantage. It is a world which we are all building together brick by brick, laying a secure foundation for the future generations.