Concentric's traffic on a general purpose server started increasing. They responded by 'hot swapping' the domain and content onto a dedicated NT server. Panel discussed a base model of electronic commerce, the current costs and limits of transactions and how the Secure Electronic Transactions standard proposal may improve the situation. A Base Model Shopper Connects with Merchant over Internet using Secure Sockets Shopper sends merchant their credit card number and order. Merchant processes shopper's request by communicating with a credit card processor over dedicated, secure line.
Processor arranges for payment, minus interchange rate, of merchant.
Shopper pays the issuing bank. There are two problems with this system. Both add to the merchant's overhead costs. The other is the interchange rate collected by the processing agency. The Interchange rate is a risk premium paid by the merchant to the credit card processor.