Majority of the things people do nowadays is done online, and shopping is no exception from this. Unsurprisingly, approximately 8 out of 10 consumers shop online.
With the convenience that online shopping offers to the customers, the e-commerce sector has outrun other retail outlets like supermarkets and independent stores and is expected to become the largest retail channel in the world by 2021.
According to Nasdaq, a study shows that consumers will make 95% of purchases online by 2040. Roughly two decades from now, this number has a high probability of happening as major retailers like Amazon, Rakuten, eBay, and Walmart leads millions of buyers to their platforms on a daily basis — not to mention other small and medium online businesses.
But like other digital-based operations, e-commerce is not as smooth-sailing as it seems to be.
Behind the massive transactions that it gets from all merchants and customers worldwide, cybersecurity risks and concerns continue to exist. Imagine how from the forecasted $6.5 trillion e-commerce sales in 2023, a 2019 report from Juniper Research estimates that retailers may lose $130 billion from card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce fraud in a span of four years.
E-commerce is intended to be reasonable, accessible, and efficient. But the risks of financial losses, increased operational costs, and sordid reputation are just some of the cases e-tailers have to face.
Here comes in the top-most priority aspect to stay out of trouble — security. By incorporating a blockchain that focuses on combatting this issue, ABBC offers a viable solution.
Security in terms of payment systems and customers’ personal data are the key points that should be highlighted but are often taken advantage of. This is why there are still buyers who are not comfortable in making online purchases despite its practicality.
Payment fraud remains to be one of the biggest problems for online business owners which is one significant factor of the 75% cart abandonment rate within e-commerce sites. Businesses lose their money as customers lose confidence in buying their products.
Handling e-payments is crucial to this market. Aside from the common issues of item shipping, supplier unresponsiveness, fake reviews, and high competition among other retailers, payment security is still the basic yet most alarming matter that needs to be addressed.
Payment Security
Payment security pertains to receiving payments or documents necessary to make a successful transaction. Typically, merchants choose a payment gateway that will be responsible for authorizing the payment process between them and their customers — from confirming the order, encrypting the client’s personal details, and sending it directly to the payment processor.
Upon checking out, it is the duty of the merchant’s payment gateway to ensure that every online purchase is recorded, under control, and protected from any risk of fraud.
There are numerous payment gateway providers in the e-commerce sector like Paypal, Skrill, and PaySimple that facilitate the online purchasing and transaction management of businesses. They are the ones accountable for processing money, verifying accounts, performing AVS checks, and even calculating tax amounts.
But payment security solutions at present need modification for them to cater to the growing industry.
Shifting our perspective to the small-scale online businesses, payment gateways tend to charge expensive processing costs for their services. A 2018 study from Ovum Ltd. found that more than half of companies (56%) expanded their online payment technology to enhance operational efficiency and deliver the best user experience.
Taking into consideration the fast-paced shopping scene, the entire payment system in e-commerce has been remodeling as hardware-based point-of-sale (POS) terminals are being replaced with faster, more open, and more mobile-and-software oriented payment solutions.
Credit card-accepting businesses have been dealing with point-to-point encryption (P2PE) that reduces Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) scope and security controls. This is a more reliable approach for merchants as more customers use their cards as payment. Customers can be assured that their card details are kept classified.
As many players get involved in the whole online retail transaction process — seller, buyer, payment gateway, payment processor — the whole system cannot be fully immune to dilemmas. Hence, a more scalable structure is necessary.
Average consumers might overlook the sensitive process involved in buying goods online. Just this year, the global value of digital transactions will amount to more than $3 million dollars, subject to a 21.5% annual rise.
The growing number of transactions, specifically in e-commerce marketplaces, will raise the payment security risk higher than before. As innovation adapts to modern society, the online business landscape can hugely benefit from a 2008-incepted idea.
Blockchain technology has been in the spotlight for 10 years now, but its priority stays the same — secure transactions.
Blockchain as a Solution
An e-commerce business is an interconnected network that caters to either B2B or B2C services. With the main purpose of being a trustworthy alternative for brick-and-mortar shops, the integration of blockchain proves to be substantial.
Blockchain, in layman’s definition, is simply a public distributed LEDGER of transactions. Encrypted data are stored, validated, and added all together in the form of blocks. With the help of ‘nodes’ or computers, blocks are confirmed and become a part of the existing chain of blocks.
Originally made for bitcoin, blockchain now holds great potential specifically to e-commerce.
The features of blockchain that make it ideal for this specific market are incorruptibility, decentralization, affordability, immutability, transparency, and high-performance. But beyond that, the innate nature of this technology is security — which is a public matter that everyone is concerned with, especially in terms of payment transactions.
According to the 2018 Global Fraud and Identity Report by Experian, more than 60% of businesses are victims of deceitful activities, while almost 30% of consumers grow more concerned about the visible security present within an e-commerce site, and if not convinced they abandon the online shop completely.
Leading e-commerce giant Amazon has embraced this into its system, making way for the Amazon Managed Blockchain. This is a fully-managed service that makes an easier and manageable creation of scalable blockchain networks using the Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum frameworks.
Even Mastercard has stated that they believe in the transformative power of blockchain. The company further mentioned that cryptocurrencies should put consumers’ protection upfront, especially with regards to information and transactions. Raising the awareness not only to merchants but even mobile network operators and other financial institutions.
Blockchain has a wide range of use cases that can be applied in different industries. But improving the payment methods, eliminating the middlemen, ensuring secure and seamless transactions are the main functions of one particular blockchain-based project.
Beginning its operations in late 2017, ABBC Foundation is a Dubai-based startup with the vision of bringing the ‘Future of Payment Security.’
The company has designed its own blockchain with the purpose of handling transactions and serving as the revolutionary payment gateway for e-commerce. Giving power to the ABBC blockchain as well is the network’s native currency — ABBC Coin.
ABBC encapsulates blockchain and cryptocurrency together to simplify the process of global payments, provide a cost-efficient and sustainable structure for both merchants and consumers, and open up more opportunities for growth and development of online enterprises.
ABBC is E-commerce Ready
Same as other projects that have undergone a metamorphosis, ABBC did the same and transformed into a much scalable, community-driven, and secure blockchain network.
The ABBC blockchain started out as a hybrid-consensus (PoW and PoS) network. But upon analysis of the research done in the spring of 2018, a DPoS-powered blockchain has now emerged. This massive upgrade is made possible with the collaboration between the ABBC Development team and the New York-based cybersecurity development firm DeepDive.Tech.
Improving its overall network process, the ABBC blockchain can now handle 5,000 transactions per second, which will only further increase as development progresses. It claims to be a world-class transactional blockchain with its mainnet being one of the fastest available blockchains of today.
Alongside these changes, ABBC has also included business models as a benchmark in giving the best service to its target audience. The newly-upgraded blockchain primarily targets small and medium marketplaces as well as advertising platforms in offering a place that could proliferate its businesses.
It is clear that payments and marketplaces are the focal points of ABBC. Approximately 15,000 businesses worldwide are accepting crypto for online purchases. With this in mind, ABBC aspires to be the platform wherein existing and thriving e-tailers can conduct secure transactions without worrying about payment frauds and chargebacks in the future.
Included among product-selling strategies would be loyalty rewards programs. These typically drive customers crazy, as who doesn’t want something extra in exchange for spending on something. Through ABBC, merchants can customize loyalty programs while customers can take advantage of tokenized rewards within their ABBC Wallet accounts.
To establish an establishment’s branding, effective advertising is the conventional response. Blockchain paves an innovative way to present this type of content. ABBC allows advertising platforms to utilize its blockchain and contribute to merchant’s leads and customer base.
Aside from its all-inclusive and powerful blockchain, ABBC also promotes the tokenization of payment in the e-commerce sector. Digital currency is the new trend as it allows faster processing, irreversible transactions due to smart contracts, and freedom from third-party control.
The ABBC Coin is a promising altcoin that intends to be one of the accepted payment methods in various online shopping marketplaces around the world. This can be safely stored in the official digital wallet of the company, ABBC Wallet.
ABBC Wallet is a non-custodial wallet that holds not only ABBC Coin, but also leading cryptos in the market like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, and Litecoin, and over 1,600 ERC-20 tokens. Key features of the wallet include multi-account creation, easy Cloud backup and restore option, resource management, and smooth fund migration.
Coming Soon: Pay With ABBC Coin
ABBC continues its efforts in making its vision happen. It shows its competitive edge among other altcoins in the market as it consistently stays among the top 50 in the CoinMarketCap ranking for the past couple of months.
Additionally, RBC, one of Russia’s business media, has recognized ABBC Coin as the top crypto growth leader (34.8%). Included also in the list are NRG, ZRX, LINK, and TUSD. This is a positive result of ABBC’s authentic value proposition in line with payment security and e-commerce.
In fact, ABBC has also invested in an upcoming e-commerce application that aims to bridge the cryptocurrency and online shopping worlds together. The Buyaladdin shopping mall will open its doors to both fiat and crypto users and offer a wide variety of merchandise from over 100 online retailers integrated within its application.
Being a secure and scalable payment gateway for e-commerce, ABBC will be accepted in Buyaladdin together with other supported coins and tokens. Once launched, the online shopping scene will expand its horizons allowing a bigger chance of cryptocurrencies’ widespread adoption.
ABBC is committed to delivering payment security to everyone, specifically to merchants, customers, advertisers, crypto traders, and crypto investors. All ecosystem participants will become ABBC community members and, as the blockchain becomes more decentralized than its previous one, they can influence what can happen next in the network.
Block producers within the ABBC blockchain have a voice in various development projects that will be held on the platform. These projects will drive ABBC partnerships and other strategic plans for the benefit of all community members.
Payment security in e-commerce will be achieved through ABBC. As the confirmation becomes streamlined and the network capable of handling thousands of transactions in a shorter period of time, ABBC can adapt and unleash all opportunities in creating a better and safer e-commerce sector.
As mentioned in an exclusive interview by one of its team members, ABBC CEO Jason Daniel Paul Philip stated that as customers continue to increase and delve into e-shopping more than before, “ABBC can provide benefits that could conveniently improve the selling and buying experience for everyone.”
Breaking its limits today and the tomorrows that will come, ABBC CEO proclaimed that ABBC might seem small in the middle of the crypto sphere, with a lot of other altcoins trying to be as functional as bitcoin right now. But looking forward, the products and services it has established will stand out among the rest as ABBC will continue to prosper its way to the mainstream world.
About Post Author
Miu Lin
Miu is a journalism major and has been writing as a business journalist for various dailies before joining OBN. She currently writes about blockchain, cryptocurrencies and business news.
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