E-commerce, short for electronic commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet. It involves conducting commercial transactions through websites, mobile apps, or other online marketplaces. E-commerce enables businesses to reach a global audience, streamline operations, and provide customers with convenient online shopping experiences. E-commerce transactions can occur in different ways, including:

• Business-to-business (B2B): The electronic exchange of products, services, or information between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers.
• Business-to-consumer (B2C): The sale of goods and services from businesses to individual consumers.
• Consumer-to-consumer: The sale of goods and services between individual consumers.
• Consumer-to-business: The sale of goods and services from individual consumers to businesses.

E-commerce transactions involve more than one party along with the exchange of data or currency to process a transaction. E-commerce platforms are tools used to manage an e-commerce business, ranging in size from ones for small businesses to large enterprises. These platforms include online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, that simply require signing up for user accounts and little to no IT implementation. To ensure the security, privacy, and effectiveness of e-commerce, businesses should authenticate business transactions, control access to resources such as webpages for registered or selected users, encrypt data, and use secure payment methods.