These relationships signify the great reach and the expanded opportunities for both buyers and sellers that the Internet provides. They also signify, though, some of the risks inherent in the Internet. When parties do not know each other, and cannot avail themselves of risk-reducing means employed in stores, or even in telephone sales, then new means to control risks are required. This is one of the principal concerns for payments associated with Internet activity. As new forms of commerce develop they require the support of payments mechanisms.
Technology often is the enabler of new commerce.
The telephone allowed people to order goods from their homes instead of going out to get them. The jet plane allows me to buy flowers in Boston the day after they are cut in Holland. And the Internet enables new forms of commerce, as I have suggested. Payments follow commerce, because we cannot conduct commerce without having means to pay one another. Sometimes the technology for the new commerce requires new payment mechanisms, which come into use only with a lag.