Figure 3-8 shows a diagram of a typical e-business payment processing system. The three functional elements of the electronic storefront’s payment processing system are order confirmation, payment gateway interface, and transaction database interface, as illustrated in Figure 3-9.

Figure 3-8. Use of the Discover one-time credit card to pay for purchases

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As shown in Figure 3-7, proper implementation of the shopping cart application requires integration of several different electronic business components. First, it is integrated with a session management component, which keeps track of a customer’s shopping session. Second, it is integrated with the product catalog application, which generates a display of products sold by the storefront and allows the customer to browse the products; the customer can select a product from the catalog and place it in the shopping cart. Third, it is integrated with—acts as an input to—the payment gateway, which comes into play at the end of the shopping session. Fourth, it is integrated with back-end databases such as product inventory for automatically verifying and updating stock quantities, customer information for tracking customers’ buying preferences, and so on.

Figure 3-7. Shopping cart implementation - technology perspective

Since the early days of electronic retail shopping, many types of shopping carts have been introduced. Some shopping carts were made publicly available along with the source code, whereas some were sold as commercial third-party applications. Of the plethora of shopping carts, many failed because of improper implementation, which eventually led to security vulnerabilities.

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Introduction

Retail shopping has evolved dramatically over the years. In the earlier days of shopping, a shopkeeper would sit behind a counter and respond to requests from a customer, selecting a product from the shelf and handing it to the customer for her consideration. The customer would then indicate whether she was interested in buying it. If so, the product would be set aside, the shopkeeper would respond to the customer’s next request, and after the customer was satisfied with all the items set aside, the shopkeeper would prepare the final bill and accept payment. If the customer didn’t like a product, the shopkeeper would naturally reshelve it.

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