Electronic commerce and e-business in Romania

With the accessibility growth to the Internet, the Electronic Commerce (EC) captured the interest of individual consumers and commercial societies from everywhere. The discussions are about the creation of a new business model (e-business, e-commerce) through the Internet that radically change their efficiency by reducing the costs, inclusive in transactions. The e-Business is a term more general than the e-Commerce as it is not limited to selling-purchasing services but also offering on-line services (maintenance services for clients), being on-line in contact with business partners and electronically managing the transactions within the organisation. The electronic commerce has appeared in Romania in February 2004 as a functional e-commerce system being the first of this kind in the Central-East Europe. Even if currently the virtual shops exceeds the number of over 650, they are still not enough for a market of 6 million Internet users (according to netBridge Investments statistics) and over 8 million banking cards in use (according to Visa and MasterCard reports). The Romanian system is still at the beginning, the market interest is obviously growing as the figures shows. However, the Romanians need to be encouraged, they have to get rid of fear and faithlessness and start transactions on Internet. On the other hand, it is interesting that the Romanian card possessors have no such reactions when it comes to use foreign and well-known sites.