Upon examination of the surface of the business world around the globe, it might seem as if e-commerce is an almost ubiquitous presence. A quick internet search will likely yield a wide variety of retail businesses that are largely or entirely web-based. However, recent research showed that internet-based business of all varieties constitutes a miniscule portion of Canada's current gross domestic product (GDP).

Although that may sound negative, small and medium sized Canadian retail merchants can in fact use this as an opportunity to move in on a practically wide-open market. At Collective POS, we understand the vital nature of e-commerce businesses in today's marketplace, both in Canada and worldwide, and can provide the proper tools, such as our VirtualMerchant payment processing solution, to help them succeed.

Internet economy in Canada and the G20
In March 2012, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released a report on the role of internet-sourced revenue in the economies of the nations making up the G-20 during 2010. This includes Canada, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan and all other countries considered to be leading the world in an economic sense. 

The BCG's research found that internet economy accounted for only 3 per cent of Canada's total GDP in 2010. This figure lags far behind those noted in other countries - as examples, it accounts for 8.3 per cent of GDP in the U.K. and 4.7 per cent of U.S. GDP.

This signals an opportunity that Canadian retail businesses may currently be missing out on. Merchants in the sector throughout the country who have previously restricted themselves to brick-and-mortar locations and mail order catalogues can diversify their operations and widen their opportunity to profit by entering the realm of e-commerce. At Collective POS, we can help these businesses by providing the most secure and efficient payment processing solutions available.

The benefits of VirtualMerchant
The VirtualMerchant platform provides a number of notable advantages for e-commerce businesses. For example, it can be used by any number of different employees with unique merchant IDs and user information, so no business is too big or too small to reap benefits from the technology. Expanding on that, it is fairly user-friendly and will not require managers to spend too much time training their employees.

Additionally, the platform's security features, such as close review of all debit and credit card transactions and SSL-certificate encryption technologies, will ensure that businesses are processing transactions in a safe and efficient manner, to the benefit of the customer and the company.