Electronic-funds-transfer Books

Surveys the different kinds of Internet-based money exchange systems available at the time of book writing. Also includes some interesting interviews and monetary history. Even though the situation has changed since the book was written, it still is worth reading for basic knowledge of the area.

This book describes SET payment process & protocal standands clearly. I think someone who is new to SET process can read this book and it would definetly be helpful.

In the brave new world of Electronic Commerce money or the concept of medium of exchange is morphing. This book lays the ground work for understanding the technology and issues of transacting on-line. Encryption, authentication, smart cards and general security issues are discussed in sufficient detail to grasp the concepts. A must read for all company owners and managers contemplating the era of digital money and preparing for the future.

Although not extremely thorough or insightful,the authors paint a clear landscape of the changing role of money in the new digital economy. Touching on several related products such as smartcards and encryption, they give the reader a solid footing in these new technolgoies

This book was a big disappointment. In very short words the book is a plug for the author's company. But even if you can live with that, the outdated material is not very valuable. My recommendation is for the authors to update the book as much of the cyberlandscape has changed in these few short years. On a positive note, the business models presented are informative. The writing style is not very clear or structured, and in 2 chapters I found more than 2 mistakes. The figures are very primitive and don't add much to the already scant information. It is a shame as I would have loved for this book to work for me. The information the book has to offer can be found free on the Internet and it is more timely.

It is not that great book. There are other great books out ther

There is an old adage which says 'never judge a book by its cover'. Well, I don't know how a book with such an attractive cover could fall so short. Granted, the writing style is fluid, fast, and highly readable, and the organization is good; yet the content of Jamison and Gold's treatise on ecommerce seems to be missing something. Jamison and Gold do get to the point quickly in their text, but one has to wonder if there is something more to the internet and ecommerce than just sales and security as they boldly assert.

Organized into eight light and readable chapters, the book takes the reader on an in-depth tour of sales and security on the internet while at the same time introducing other vital areas such as website creation, maintainance, and promotion. The first five chapters, each roughly twenty pages long, are devoted to a skim tour of website development, marketing and promotion. By the end of the first chapter, the reader is thoroughly indoctrinated in all of the obligatory hype and marketing spin the internet is infamous for, and is encouraged by all means to jump on the modern incarnation of the American Goldrush. The second chapter outlines the internet selling process in twenty three steps, while chapters three, four and five are devoted to the various processes, strategies, and tools necessary to implement these twenty three steps. Chapters six and seven deal with the real meat of the book, sales and security issues respectively. Chapter eight profiles what Jamison and Gold believe to be ecommerce success stories; bear in mind that more than a few of these companies have yet to show a profit even after several years of operation. Four appendices containing useful information, such as a glossary of key terms, companies that are eager to get other companies on the eselling bandwagon, online transaction processing companies, and contact information for Jamison-Gold, round out the book.

On the plus side, the book did contain a very good overview of security related issues on the net, some of them even new to me, in a very understandable and non-technical fashion. The book was definitely written with an eye for the non-technical executive who is not very tech savvy, yet has money to spend.

On the minus side, on top of the usual marketing spin to be found in any internet book, the authors also include several shameless promotional plugs (some of it quite informative, but most of it annoying) for a variety of software companies. In more than a few cases, the authors merely grafted the marketing hype, advertising and promotional literature of the software companies featured in the book liberally throughout the text.

Finally, though the book is dated, and the terrain has changed drastically in the last two years, it does serve as a good introduction to and reference on sales and security issues related to ecommerce for those executives who are not in tune with the potential usefulness of the web in business. Bear in mind that the potential uses of the web and the internet are not solely limited to increasing sales, revenues, and ultimately profits, but also encompass increased productivity, efficiency, and faster communication and turn-around time in business- four significant and vital areas the authors failed to cover completely. A better book in the same category with well-rounded information is Phaedra Hise's Growing Your Business Online.

If you're business is not yet on the Internet, this book is an excellent resource to provide you with the tools to get you started with a Web site. It guides you through a simple 23 step to get you started. Very informative. No overly-technical gibberish. A must read for any business, large or small, interested in making money on the Net

You will get an introduction and background information to generally understand and evalute eCash-Systems on your own. I am missing more information about actual implementations and a view into the future. It is a good start-up, but if you want to dive deeper into this topic you need more information.

This was a real disappointment. The book is almost unreadable. Terms are defined and then not used properly or are jumbled together--you never can tell what she's talking about. Too many vague generalities. Sentences often make no sense. This book desperately needs an editor. I don't think the author has anything interesting to say about "virtual money," but it's hard to tell. A confusing jumble of babble. Click on to the next book.

This book had a lot of promise.. I was very interested in learning more about the world of Electronic Commerce and how local and global economies are being impacted. This book made a few interesting points, but for the most part was tedious to read, and never got into enough detail on any one subject to be interesting.

I'm still looking for another e-commerce roadmap...

Speaking as a layman who had practically no knowledge of e-commerce I found the book to be a good introduction to the world of electronic money and of what the future of money will probably be (Personally, I don't like what I see). Along with the history of money, and the development of the Internet, the book contains a lot of detail on the nuts and bolts of the whole complex network; and I don't know how interesting that is to the average person. I read this book not for pleasure, but as research for a paper I am now composing on a related issue. Regarding the topic of virtual money, the author seems to discuss the problems and risks surrounding it rather than give concrete solutions. But neither the publisher nor the author described the work as an "answer book". From what I can see, the write up on the book's dust jacket is an accurate summary of what the book contains.

This book is written for technical people. The overall tone is dull and pedantic. The contents will be difficult to follow for those who do not have mathematical or programming background.

Anyone who has an overall understanding of the EMV specifications will have very little use for the material in this book. There is nothing of note with respect to specific card schemes.

Business people can get much of the non-technical information in the book for free from other sources.

I just read this book (it said it was a 1996 edition) this year (1998), only to find most of the URL stated in the Appendix section are out of date.

Maybe the development of the WWW is too fast!

Well, now it's 2002, and the the revolution has definitely not been televised. We've heard now from authors like these guys for about, oh, 10 years or so that smart cards are the next revolution. That it's just a matter of time before mag stripe cards are swept aside in this tidal wave of new technology.

Friends, it just ain't gonna happen here in the States. Despite massive attempts by GemPlus and other 'leaders' described in this book, the entire thing has been just one more marketing-driven attempt to force unneeded technology on the masses. The dog didn't hunt, and these 'visionaries' are now unwinding all their efforts here, sending thousands of programmers out on to the streets.

This thinly veiled advertisement, with very poor design and little original content, has suffered the ultimate indignity: history has rendered it all but irrelevant.

After reading this book I wasn't any smarter about smart cards. The charts and the introduction made me buy the book. But actually the book is very superficial. There is no real structure or framework that organizes the content. OK, there are chapters, but often it isn't at all clear why certain information is presented in a certain chapter. Also, it is not really clear how the different chapters are distinguished. The title of a chapter usually doesn't help you. Several pieces of information are presented over and over again in different chapters. Most of the information presented is common sense or well known software engineering principles. The information specific to smart cards is limited and not very detailed. Sometimes one could get the feeling that even the authors didn't really know more than the superficial information they present. A coworker of mine uses the term "consultant speak" for that kind of style. The charts and graphic are almost exclusively from other sources and not genuine to the book. They are usually only remotely related to what is discussed in the text and the authors don't bother explaining any of them. The case studies are not what you would normally expect from a case studies. They briefly mention a particular smart card project but don't really go into any details about technology or why certain design decisions were made. Most of the information given in the case study chapters is applicable to any kind of IT project. The check lists are pure common sense and sometimes unintentionally humorous. To sum it up: The book is easy to read but if you are serious about learning about smart cards, it doesn't help you at all. The claim to guide you through the whole process of a smart card project is a gross exaggeration. If you don't already know most of what you need to know from other sources, relying on this book alone will most likely make your project fail. The smart card specific information in the book could have easily been compressed into a nice 10 page white paper.

I bought this book hoping it would give some ideas on how smart card technology may offer new business opportunities for my software development company, but found nothing of the sort. I have not found an answer to a single question I had, for that matter. The laguage is horrible, information is presented poorly, lots of totally useless details and almost nothing on the subject I was mostly interested in: how (and why) a company would embrace this tachnology to make money.

Very disappointing. I am 75% through this book and struggling to finish it. Whilst the book has some good information (smart card lingo, players in the industry, trends...etc) most are useless because the materials are so badly organised. Filling up the book with charts, diagrams and detailed reference tables of smart card standards does NOT make it a useful book, all are illrelevant without much deeper explanation. Remember when you were in high school, you copied a few paragraphs from one book and a few from an other to "write" an essay --- it reads just like that, very amateurish. A lot of the so called "case study" blah about how good/bad the technology is, but no details. It's an informercial.... "Buy my stuff, and I'm going to make you lots of money. This man with only a high school education bought my tape barely over 3 weeks and he is now making $5000 a week,....blah, blah, blah".... where is the bloody proof ?! It's a damn Monday night informercial. Oh, I actually work for a smart card company so I may be bias. Amazon should introduce half a point, this book is a bit below 1.

I have read this book and think it is useless. The author is very hard to understand and the technology is poorly explained.

I would agree with the other reviewers that the book is a dry read, but I found it to be a useful reference manual.

Not recommended.

Sad to say, the book looks like an academic textbook of specifications, definitions, glued together with paragraphs and diagrams. I've seen Internet RFCs and STDs far more informative, interesting and useful than this.

If the book is actually recommended reading to use or implement SET, then SET must be the ISDN [1] of e-commerce! ;-)

Cheerio,

Link.

[1] ISDN: a complex standard designed by a committee to primarily solve committee issues, and not technical issues.

I don't know whether this book adds much to the specs of SET that are publicly available available on the web.

Furthermore, the book is hard to read due to bad lay out and contains several typos.

I am afraid that this book was published quickly to gain from the hype, but I think, but hope at least, that better books are available on this subject.