Alorie Gilbert of CNET writes:
in August 1994, online retailing was on the cusp of a breakthrough. Advances in Web security that year started the trickle that has become a significant chunk of the economy. But that didn’t “solve” the problem of transaction security. Many data security battles are still being fought, against such foes as “phishing” and Trojan horse viruses.
Despite these dangers, U.S. shoppers will spend $144 billion online this year, according to Forrester Research and Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Association for online merchants. That’s 27 percent more than they spent online last year and 6.6 percent of total retail sales across the country, according to their joint study, released in May.
Though CommerceNet is not mentioned directly in the article, we are proud of the fact that we had a hand in 1994 in enabling early e-commerce efforts by bringing together the pioneers to create safe methods for collecting payments online. CommerceNet also celebrates our 10th anniversary this year.