Online shopping is not all about convenience. Aside from its flexibility to shopping schedules and budget, perhaps the greatest weakness of this method of shopping is payment security. Many times, people are reluctant to try out online shopping because it would also mean risking their hard-earned money. However, that is not always the case. Most online shopping stores operate with a tight security system, all of which are designed to safeguard money transfers to protect and forge buyer-seller relations. These websites have teams of efficient people, working on monitoring their buyers' transactions 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

The usual issues regarding online shopping surrounds payment and purchase transactions. This is due to there always being an underlying fear of being a victim of a product scam or sham. To be secured in every transaction that you make, we have listed the following factors that need to be considered every time you do payments online:

Most online shopping stores operate with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. It is a system that encrypts credit card information that you input whenever you make payments online. For the customer's security, SSL checks if the web address on the page begins with "https:" instead of "http:"

However, the system's efficiency solely relies on how reliable and secure the client's Internet connection is. If you are having problems regarding this matter, you can make use of Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) to make the connection secure.

Some of the online shopping stores have free phone lines where buyers can contact a customer representative to ask for assistance in doing product purchasing. Actually, phone-in transactions are rather more secure. Avoid giving your credit card information and other security information through email to prevent cases of identity theft.

Make sure that every password is confidential especially those used on home banking or wire transfer transactions.

Unsolicited commercial messages are usually attached in all file names that end in ".exe". Avoid opening these files because they usually contain viruses that might affect your Internet purchasing transactions or corrupt some important files in your computer. Invest on a virus protection program so as to prevent it from interfering with the important transactions such as payments that you do online.

What most people don't know is that the problems with transactions in conventional shopping methods occur more frequently than those problems experienced in online shopping.

Often, websites are more efficient than manned cashier stations. With automated and well-maintained online stores, the risks of error are minimal to 0%. Aside from that, the problems with online transactions can quickly and easily be traced; whereas transactions made by man takes time and many interviews or reports to be verified.

One of the convenience in online shopping lies in its payment options. All you need to have is the number of your credit or debit card or the account number and password of your home/online banking account. The great point about these payment methods is that you can easily trace unauthorised payments. Hence, they minimise buyer-seller disputes regarding payments.