Once the virtual store is open for business, shoppers can browse through products displayed by SoftCart’s transaction engine and select items for purchase. When the shopper is ready to "check out", SoftCart automatically calculates shipping and sales tax information, creates an invoice and processes secure payment for the items purchased.

Store Creation and Management
With its integrated Store Manager, SoftCart 4.0™ provides the most flexible store creation and catalog maintenance features available today. Merchants and Web designers have the option of using Mercantec Store Manager’s browser-based store construction wizard and templates, or designing their own site with any of today’s popular third-party HTML creation tools. Store Manager also makes encryption management, order management and day-to-day catalog maintenance easier than ever before.

Merchandising Features
Part of any successful commerce site is flexible merchandising options, and SoftCart 4.0™ gives merchants some of the most powerful capabilities for designing and implementing promotions and merchandising models. SoftCart 4.0 supports sales and discounts, special promotions, upselling, temporary out-of-stock, and multiple retailing models.

Tax and Shipping
As with previous versions, SoftCart 4.0™ supports automatic tax calculation and multiple shipping models, including Price Threshold, Weight Threshold, Quantity Ordered, Line Item, Base Plus Line Item, and No Charge.

Payment Systems
Mercantec SoftCart supports a wide variety of offline and online payment systems, as well as electronic wallets such as Microsoft Wallet and GlobeSet Wallets. For offline payment, shoppers can print out, fax or phone-in orders. Integrated online payment options include CyberCash, ICVERIFY and PaymentNet. Additional payment options are provided through third party integration to WorldPay and GlobeSet.

Security
Security is one of the most talked-about topics in the electronic commerce industry. While many commerce packages provide encryption for transaction security, the order and credit card information can still be vulnerable at the server level. Mercantec SoftCart 4.0™ employs password protection as well as SSL and PGP encryption methods to offer complete end-to-end security for the shopper as well as the merchant’s server environment.

Mercantec SoftCart supports all known Web servers including, Netscape (Nasdaq: NSCP), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and APACHE. Mercantec SoftCart runs on Windows NT, Windows 95 and 98, and the most popular UNIX platforms including Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, Linux, HP/UX, FreeBSD and BSDI.

The New SoftCart Family
In addition to SoftCart 4.0, Mercantec is also introducing three additional applications in the SoftCart family of commerce products :

• SoftCart Start-Up is an entry-level application that offers browser-based store creation and supports up to 10 products.
• SoftCart Lite is for small to medium-sized stores with up to 100 products, and includes support for any third-party HTML creation tool.
• SoftCart Suite offers small and medium merchants a turn-key, integrated electronic commerce solution that includes the functionality of SoftCart 4.0 with a drop ship fulfillment module, an Intuit QuickBooks link, and the choice of several online payment systems.

The SoftCart product family provides a flexible line of commerce software that enables merchants with any level of expertise to implement an online store. It also gives ISPs and Web hosting providers the ability to offer a range of solutions to fit their customers’ current commerce requirements and provide an easy growth path.

About Mercantec, Inc.
Since its founding in 1995, Mercantec, Inc., has become a leading provider of open retail electronic commerce software. Mercantec SoftCart software enables merchants to expand their geographic reach by marketing and selling goods and services via the World Wide Web. Mercantec has partnered with a worldwide network of more than 85 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web hosting service providers, including GTE Internetworking, Hiway Technologies, MindSpring, and PSINet, to offer affordable hosting and electronic commerce solutions to merchants. Mercantec’s other distribution channels include Web consultants, software developers, integrators and OEMs, including American Express and the Tandem division of Compaq. SoftCart utilizes StateTrack™ technology to provide 100 percent shopper privacy.