e-Commerce is fundamentally transforming the way businesses are conducted.
Progressive businesses are rapidly adopting the e-Factor with the objective of eliminating ineffective and unnecessary intermediaries and processes.

Dell, a US computer hardware manufacturer, does not have any physical sales outlet and sells its computers online. Due to huge economy in its operations it became a formidable competitor of IBM, Compaq and other old Giants.
Dell sold $32 billion worth of computers through its e-Shop during last 4 quarters.

Current statistics show that the total turnover of transactions through e-Commerce in the year 2003 will rise to whopping $3 trillion. To take technological edge over competitors, Businesses are adopting e-Commerce very rapidly and with open mind.

Over the last two years considerable work has been done in laying the foundation of e-Commerce in Pakistan. Some crucial indicators which tell us that now is the right time to adopt e-Commerce are:

• Currently in Pakistan the Internet facility is accessible to 850 cities catering around 3 million users. Two years earlier the internet bandwidth was 29 MB which has increased to 300 MB in the current times. The main aim of today is the transformation of the bandwidth from Megabytes to Gegabytes. This facility is expected to cover 1200 cities and the number of users will hopefully increase to 10 million by the end of year 2003.

• Citibank has already launched Internet Merchant Account facility in Pak Rupees for the first time in Pakistan. Likewise the other major banks including MCB are going to launch this service soon.

• Presently there are half a million credit card holders in Pakistan, which will hopefully touch the One million mark by the end of year 2005.