RON: And then two, obviously on all the different platforms we talked about this I think in chapter two or three, I think three, we were talking about all the different devices, right? All the different device types. So when you're talking about different payments and enforcing governance, you have to enforce that across phones and tablets.
And then I think the third element we'll really cover today is the internationalization of auctions, because now all of a sudden I might be dealing with multilingual, multicurrency. With the E.U., I might be dealing with GST, VAT taxes, GDPR, escrow funds. I mean, there are about 15, 20 different things. And we're literally just talking about payments, which is funny, isn't it?
CHRIS: Yeah, that's right. It's probably one of the most sensitive, if not the most sensitive aspects, just because this is where the finality of the transaction occurs, at least as far as the technical details. This is going to be the pinnacle security aspect as well. And there's an element of trust here, because this platform itself isn't necessarily going to be taking accountability for every portion of the payment and rendering or fulfilling of the items purchased. So, yeah, it's really complex.
Fundamentally, what we're dealing with here is an overall set of criteria that, depending on your market, can be relatively simple. It's going to have several underpinning components from a technical side of things that are consistent principles that you'll see throughout. And number one, the actual process itself has to account for the buyer and seller governance. These are workflows that are unique to auctions.
So this is something that you're going to want to make sure that you're actually considering when you're looking at an eCommerce auction platform. Is the auction platform capable of handling some of these principles that we'll go into in more detail today? Then, depending on the scenario, it could be much more complex. In addition to dealing with buyers and sellers and making sure that there's some form of escrow or there's some proof of the ability to pay, or possibly a reserve, or some ability to have a governance around an issue with resolution and remediation. You could also be dealing with multicurrency, multilingual intermodal shipments, international shipments, VAT, multifaceted array of different variables here.
So we're going to get into those today. And I'm excited to get into the weeds on some of those here.
RON: That's excellent. Well, let's go ahead and kick it off and we'll jump right into governance for online eAuctions first. I'll just define it and then I'll let you dive into the technical aspects of governance. You might just replace governance with the legalities, rules, regulations, policies, procedures. All of that falls into that umbrella of what we call governance.
The governance is literally the rules and laws that oversee everything that happens within the site. This could be governance around bidders and how they pre-authorized. Like with Barrett-Jackson, I might have to go in ahead of time two days before the auction to register as bidder, I might have to send in a bank statement showing I have a balance of at least $50,000 in account. That might be governance.