tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155030842012-01-10T16:53:51.022+11:00Please comment on my ecommerce postings from down under. And don't forget to visit www.ecommercereport.com.austewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-9565788174231921782011-12-09T15:46:00.004+11:002011-12-09T15:58:43.503+11:00

Australia’s Productivity Commission has recommended no change to the minimum $AUD1000 tax and duty thresholds for online imports. The long-awaited Commission report was released this morning - Friday 9th December and contains 13 recommendations. No doubt the most significant of these is its recommendation that Australia’s comparatively liberal tax and duty thresholds should remain unchanged.

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-91040458105974641532011-12-08T15:26:00.009+11:002011-12-08T16:05:39.858+11:00

Will Australians buy honey online?I'm asking the question because I've listed some honey for sale at ebay.com.auIts fine Australian honey from both a leading brand - Beechworth honey - which is in all the supermarkets, and a boutique supplier - Des O'Tooles - that you won't find in any supermarket.You'll have to search very, very hard to find the listings at ebay.com.au because, unlike at

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-46059819738844973942010-03-08T10:53:00.010+11:002010-03-12T21:49:35.706+11:00

How long do dead onlineshops live on in Google?Thats become an interesting question because of the story I published at eCommerce Report last week.The story reported that online merchant -www.ozdirect.com.au - had finally been found guilty of taking peoples money and not supplying the goods.Ozdirect's websites closed down some months ago however, and authorities report that the whereabouts of

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-8437696251777315962009-10-16T18:33:00.003+11:002009-10-16T18:41:57.659+11:00

What does an ecommerce job mean to you? Is it a technical job, where someone has skills in HTML programming? Or is it just about any job working in an online business.This week I've been asking myself just what people mean when they advertise an ecommerce job.The question has become quite pressing now that I've added an ecommerce jobs page to my www.ecommercereport.com.au web-site.I find that the

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-20867690050460748722009-10-09T14:28:00.006+11:002009-10-09T14:43:57.148+11:00

Dark Blue Sea's chief executive, Greg Platz, has just told me that yes, the expired domains business they've bought is Domain 8.And yes, he confirmed the purchase price is potentially worth as much as $1.5million if all the earn-out conditions are satisfied.However he also confirmed that DBS has only bought Domain 8's expoired domains business. It hasn't bought the entire Domain 8 company, and it

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-10972290113319952822009-09-04T17:16:00.003+10:002009-09-04T17:40:54.175+10:00

This week I've been looking at some new ecommerce awards down-under. Industry association, the Australian Interactive and Multi-Media Associations (AIMIA) AMBER awards and Smart Company's web awards.Regrettably, some of the AIMIA awards, such as best online retailer, are unlikely to produce credible results. A flawed process of nomination has produced a list of 20 contenders, probably half of

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-10297400024843879442009-08-26T12:28:00.005+10:002009-08-26T13:24:32.079+10:00

There were more than fifty companies and businesses exhibiting at the trade show for the Online -Retailer conference in Sydney earlier this month (18-19 August).Most enjoyed strong and even enthusiastic interest from the more than 2,600 people who attended.And indeed the whole event suggested something of an industry finding and recognizing itself for the first time.(Certainly the industry backed

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-47894060565568352242009-08-11T10:45:00.003+10:002009-08-11T11:13:23.211+10:00

Australia's Interactive and Multi-Media Association (AIMIA) has announced a new awards competition for ecommerce and online services.The awards are to be known as the AMBERS. Entry is free and larger companies, with more than 1 million users a month, will be entered automatically.Entries close on August 20 so make sure you get your site or service entered.If you can't find the link at the AIMIA

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-10336619977686581992009-07-27T12:32:00.007+10:002009-07-27T12:55:16.530+10:00

It hasn't been announced yet. But there is no doubt that Australian gaming giant, TABCorp, is trying to buy TasTOTE, operator of the Tasmanian TAB.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission(ACCC) web site shows that it is looking at a TABCorp merger proposal. Indeed it has been since Friday the 24th July.(Presumably TABCorp didn't submit the proposal until late Friday afternoon, so as to

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-37837464572008067922009-07-10T15:22:00.004+10:002009-07-10T15:39:54.024+10:00

John Parks, from KordaMentha, has confirmed that the business known as Intabill is, in Ausralia at least, dead and defunct.The controversial Brisbane headquartered business that provided payment processing services for some of the world's leading poker sites, has gone under.Reputedly, the business owes its creditors around $80million.Parks said that the administration is formally for BTProjects

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-83620354941879931582009-06-26T14:11:00.006+10:002009-06-26T14:46:23.211+10:00

Tenders for the Australian government's Northern Territory Intervention 'Basics' EFTPOS card are due to close next Thursday the second of July.A large cast of banks, card organisations and payments businesses will be trying to win the contract, which is expected to be awarded in September this year.The card was created following the Australian government's NT intervention, (which was prompted by

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-51099818504624246072009-06-23T13:44:00.009+10:002011-09-01T13:16:34.590+10:00

Intabill, the controversial Brisbane based business that describes itself as a "leading global ecommerce company" is facing court action over alleged defaults to leading US online poker sites. Press reports about a Queensland Supreme Court action begun on 25th May initially suggested that Intabill owed four big poker stars, including Pokerstars.net, some $30million. A more recent report, in the

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-44010725407743040262009-06-22T13:51:00.006+10:002009-06-23T14:24:30.161+10:00

Lots of online news services have rushed to publish numbers purportedly showing that Australian online shoppers are "returning to the web in droves to peruse global e-commerce websites and make online purchases."Trouble is, the numbers come from a June 18 press release issued by a US online marketing services provider - CoreMetrics. And they look decidedly dodgy.For example, CoreMetrics claims

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-4528410858743133372009-06-18T11:52:00.008+10:002009-06-23T14:24:57.062+10:00

Mystery solved. Michael Hellwig, a marketing analyst at Brisbane based online department store dStore - has been flushed out as the person who advertised a bogus job at eLance.com.The job was for a journalist to write for a new Australian ecommerce blog, up to nine a hours a week. The ad attracted at least two responses from freelance journalists. But the job isn't genuine and Hellwig is just

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-59895193819235011072009-06-17T13:38:00.004+10:002009-06-17T14:20:06.230+10:00

It looks like www.ecommerce.com.au is off the air, and I'm guessing thats because either its current owner or a new owner is gearing up to become an ecommerce publishing tycoon.Certainly a brand new member at eLance has requested proposals from interested freelance journalists to work part -time on a new Australian ecommerce news site.The invitation at eLance says "I am in the process of setting

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-54408270183213832732009-06-16T11:47:00.002+10:002009-06-16T12:12:42.053+10:00

eBay Australia's new Certified eBay Educator programme is now up and running.Details of how to become certified are spelled out in a 17 page contract that must be agreed to before sitting the online exam.Developed by Sydney based market research company, Stokes Mischewski, the new programme replaces the former eBay 'Education Specialist' arrangement with PowerU university in the US.Any current

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-12274378725395160752009-06-04T10:42:00.004+10:002009-06-04T11:31:15.323+10:00

Earlier this year we started getting a new daily online newsletter in our email inbox called Digital Media. It styled itself 'Australia's journal of the new media revolution' and with a daily pdf edition, original stories written by respected IT journo - Natalie Apostolou, and a web-site featuring all the polish of publisher Reed Business Information, the future looked bright.But something seems

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-87878539331561863272009-05-29T11:31:00.004+10:002009-05-29T11:46:55.296+10:00

ICANN is arguably the Internet's supreme governing body.So its meeting in Sydney from the 21st-26th June is an opportunity to see the inner workings of Internet governance at close hand.And certainly there are some issues on ICANN's agenda whose resolution could prove very significant for the future of ecommerce and online businesses everywhere.A proposal to extend domain names into non Latin

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-18647078580616214202009-05-25T13:09:00.015+10:002009-05-25T13:39:34.368+10:00

Australian retailers' ecommerce incompetence is part of the reason why News Ltd cash-box, Netus, has partnered with US online retailer, CSN Stores to set-up Buyster.So said former Microsoft executive and Netus co-owner, Daniel Petre, in the AFR this morning.Buyster is a local knock-off of CSN. It is using the exact same approach that, in just six years, has built the US company into a business

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-13848642803498833342009-05-21T14:22:00.006+10:002009-05-25T13:58:22.842+10:00

You can now talk to us via our Twitter account - our Twitter name is ecommerceau.So you can follow us by Twitter if you like.We're not sure whether this will be useful to our readers or not, but we're keen to see what all the fuss is about.I plan to post ( or tweet, as they say) our latest weekly email update.And anything else that feels useful or relevant.Let me know what you think, whether it

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-87807814211465410422009-05-20T15:40:00.001+10:002009-05-20T15:49:14.429+10:00

Australian businesses connected to the Commonwealth Bank for the processing of their Internet credit-card transactions will not have to replace their existing payment gateways with the bank’s new eVolve service.Dominic White, the CBA’s general manager of merchant solutions said that the service is being offered to new merchant customers and to those looking to accept credit-card transactions

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-83274364017752553792009-05-19T12:59:00.003+10:002009-05-19T13:18:26.493+10:00

Official statistics released last Friday show that Australian online credit-card fraud was significantly higher in 2008 than in the 2007.Overall credit and charge card fraud increased to a rate of 53.2cents in every $1000, up from 44.7cents in 2007.Most of this is believed to involve online credit-card fraud. But the publicly published statistics don't break down the figures into separate online

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-36839222040503048212009-05-13T15:02:00.005+10:002009-05-13T15:20:50.720+10:00

The domain name smarties at Nick Bolton's Australian Style have done it again - stuffed up, that is.Over the weekend they attempted a bulk transfer of some twenty thousand customers domain names from one of Nick's accredited registrars to another.The move was no doubt pre-emptive, and intended to forestall any loss of customers when Nick's domain name registrar business - Bottle - loses its

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-31646934829987394922009-05-07T16:44:00.003+10:002009-05-07T16:59:56.936+10:00

Online retailers in Australia have been poorly served by local publishers and conference/event organisers.We found that out for ourselves a couple of years back with our Onlineshop2007 event.There just wasn't any single channel we could find to cost-effectively promote the event.And similarly, we found it difficult to find anyone who was writing or commenting on news and developments affecting

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-21424893956616478412009-05-05T13:45:00.003+10:002009-05-05T14:16:40.418+10:00

PayPal has announced it will be launching a new Certified Developer and Partner Programme down-under.The announcement, dated 28th April 2009, released by PR company - the De Wintern Group, said that the programme would "recruit developers and solution providers to help meet the growing demand for online payments outside of the retail sector."I'm not sure what this says about the four local

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-29359075939230681202009-05-01T12:34:00.009+10:002009-05-01T13:07:52.390+10:00

eBay Australia's new Certified eBay Educator program is a little late in starting. When the company announced the new program back on the 24th March, it said it would be launched in April."The exam, logos, certificates, contracts and other relevant materials will be available from mid April"Thats not happened but I'm sure the launch can't be too far away.Thats because whats going to be offered

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-64262712867986880132009-04-28T13:15:00.004+10:002009-04-28T13:23:06.840+10:00

The injunction stands. Nick Boltons Internet domain name business - Bottle Domains - can continue registering Au domain names. That’s the long and short of last week's Supreme Court action in Melbourne where industry regulator – au Domain Administration Ltd – failed to overturn an emergency injunction granted to Bolton’s company – Australian Style Ltd. The injunction will stand, at least until a

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-61825390818942656402009-02-21T09:56:00.006+11:002009-02-21T10:28:07.926+11:00

Australia's domain name industry regulator - au Domain Administration Ltd. appears to have lost another legal battle.This time its in the Supreme Court in Queensland. Melbourne based registrar - Domain Directors (i.e Instra Ltd) brought an action against auDA there to stop the regulator stripping the company of a domain name - auregistry.com.au.Part of the problem is that the name is so close to

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-13009461468923433262007-01-16T13:56:00.000+11:002007-01-16T14:07:19.346+11:00

Yes, I'm back and, in fact, I never went away. Its just that my blogging experience from 2005 was under-whelming. No-one reading my blogs and no point.Even so, I'll try again in 2007 now that blogging is better understood. And what better topic to blog about than the Australian government's smart card. (i.e. Joe Hockey's Access card).I see from this morning's press that the director of the Office

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1129680419459426212005-10-19T10:06:00.000+10:002005-10-19T10:08:35.326+10:00

We're still waiting. Its now some weeks later and, despite numerous phone calls to the Telstra dealer concerned, Mercury Blue, and to Telstra itself, still no sign of either the promised modem, or anything else.Mercury Blue is based in Adelaide it seems, and based on this experience, they're simply a waste of time.They do a variety of things for Telstra it seems. Mobile upgrades, and also operate

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1128662021497372072005-10-07T15:13:00.000+10:002005-10-07T15:24:57.600+10:00

This week Telstra reported its one-millionth customer signed up to a broadband service.Based on my experience, most of those will be customers of services bought from another company,rather than directly from Telstra or one of its dealers.Once we had shifted our home phone service back to Telstra, preparatory to choosing an ADSL service supplier(which could easily have been Telstra), we were

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1128580044009188862005-10-06T16:27:00.000+10:002005-10-07T15:21:43.676+10:00

Waiting for Telstra was, famously, the title of one of the espisodes in the top-rating Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Kath and Kimseries.The plot involved Kath inadvertently (but typically) gravitating to various misadventures and, in this particular episode, whilst she waited all dayfor the Telstra phone technician to arrive.Waiting for Telstra has been, for many years, a common

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1127888165916262312005-09-28T16:16:00.000+10:002005-09-28T16:16:05.920+10:00

Last weeks ePassports seminar out at the Reserve Bank's Note Printing works in outer Melbourne was very interesting, if only because of the revelation that our new electronic passports are going to be less than perfect. They'll have a scanned picture of us on their chip, which will be checked by an automated face recognition scanner at the airport. (I assume how it will work will be that the

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1127373962307444872005-09-22T17:26:00.000+10:002005-09-22T17:26:02.320+10:00

It was a fake, phoney, bogus and bad. At first I thought someone had make a mistake when typing in an email address, and typed in mine. It clearly wasn't me because I've never sold anything on eBay. It was a complaint email. It appeared to be from someone claiming that I'd taken their money but not delivered what I'd promised. It asked me to click on the message icon and explainwise I'd be

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1126930217052443222005-09-17T14:10:00.000+10:002005-09-17T14:28:35.043+10:00

Australia's most popular payments gateway is eCommerce Report.If you don't agree then I challenge to you to disprove prove it.You'll probably find that you can't disprove it, for the same reasons that the claimcan't be proved either.There simply isn't any independent source of evidence.Thats why I'm preparing a special research report on Australia's online paymentsgateways.I'm already making

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1126160102018256652005-09-08T16:15:00.000+10:002005-09-08T16:15:02.040+10:00

It mightn't be an age-old mystery, but the question of just how much business is done on-line is at least a hardy perennial. Certainly the release of the on-line retailing sales data in the US in recent times has helped confirm that on-line is only a niche market in most areas, such as grocery and the like. On-line retail sales are about 2% of all retail sales according to the US Bureau of Census

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1125536124894981872005-09-01T10:55:00.000+10:002005-09-01T11:05:37.513+10:00

Stewart Carter and Dr Fei Liu in the lecture theatre at Latrobe University.Last Friday I had the good fortune to visit Latrobe university and give a guest lecture to mainly post-graduate students studying ecommerce in the department of computer science and computer engineering.I talked about on-line payment systems and, as usual, found a lot of the students were very interested in credit-card

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1125463652667238632005-08-31T14:47:00.000+10:002005-08-31T14:47:32.680+10:00

Later this year, US company Cybertrust will be vouching for your Australian identity when you present an e-passport at international airports. And the International Civial Aviation Organisation will be verifying that your passport was issued by the Australian government. That appears to be the upshot of this weeks news that Australia's new e-passports will use Cybertrust's public key

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1124948968427664602005-08-25T15:49:00.000+10:002005-08-25T16:10:30.540+10:00

Dead web-pages and out of date information are a curse on the web. For my upcoming annual review of payments gateways down-under I've stumbled on quite a few surprising dead sites and out of date pages.For example following the link www.eway.com.au to stgeorgebank include at least two sites/businesses ontheir list of preferred partners who are, if not dead, then certainly no longer alive under

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1124679868229705872005-08-22T13:04:00.000+10:002005-08-22T13:16:30.900+10:00

Last week my email inbox had yet another unsolicited financial scam, this time pretending to come from the brother of a Japanese diplomat killed in Iraq earlier this year.A little quick checking showed that there is no web-site associated with the domain used for the email address (bkysconsortium.com).Moreover the domain name itself was only registered on the 12th of August, with whois records

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1124432977957922862005-08-19T16:29:00.000+10:002005-08-22T13:06:13.356+10:00

Todays announcement that Australian passports are soon to include a micro-chip that will store an image of the passport-owner is not unexpected.But it will be interesting to see how it works in practice.The image stored in the chip is intended to be of a suitable quality to be usable in facial recogntion systems.But what does that mean, and how do you tell, just by looking at a photograph,

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1124324897691744712005-08-18T10:28:00.000+10:002005-08-18T10:28:17.696+10:00

NAB sources tell me yesterday's phishing attack has failed to have any impact at all. Only five customers are known to have keyed in their details, with some 300 customers phoning in to alert the bank, and 50 odd sending in emails. As one NAB exec put it, "most of our customers are aware of these things now." She said that the email didn't contain a trojan, and that it had originated from Servia,

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15503084.post-1124258103173619602005-08-17T15:48:00.000+10:002005-08-17T16:01:41.266+10:00

Victoria's $494 million public transport smart-card ticketing system will apparently use the same technology as does London's public transport system.Sources who should know tell me that the contactless smart-card system will display the account balance of your card as you pass through the turn-stiles.These sorts of details are unusually scarce at the moment because of the controversy over the

stewart carterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04386890086365360276noreply@blogger.com0