Current legal activities come to the complexity of the term "electronic commerce": international and national level

The article provides a comprehensive study of various approaches to defining the term «electronic commerce» in the context of modern legal, economic and technological challenges. The analysis begins with an overview of scholarly perspectives on e-commerce, which range from narrow interpretations that focus on basic online sales contracts to broader concepts that encompass all aspects of electronic interaction between business entities, including logistics, marketing, financial operations and international transactions. The term «e-commerce» is clearly distinguished from related concepts, such as «e-commerce», «e-business», which mostly focuses on the sale of goods and services. The article also explores the positive aspects of e-commerce, such as increasing the efficiency of business processes, reducing transaction costs, access to global markets, increased convenience for consumers, etc. At the same time, a number of negatives have been identified, including the risk of personal data theft, payment fraud, and other types of cybercrime. The normative regulation of electronic commerce at the level of international law and in Ukraine is separately analyzed. The main legislative acts and their impact on the development of e-commerce are highlighted. On the basis of the conducted research, three key criteria for a clear definition of e-commerce are formulated, including legal relations arising through electronic means, interaction of entities through the Internet, and multi-level business processes, namely: basic e-commerce, integrated e-commerce and global e-commerce. As a result, a proper understanding of e-commerce as a form of business activity is proposed, which involves the implementation of commercial transactions using information and telecommunication means, covering a wide range of processes, including the conclusion and execution of contracts for the sale of goods and services, payment processing, logistics, marketing and advertising , as well as management of currency and customs operations during international transactions, which allows to increase business efficiency and reduce costs due to process automation, optimization of resource management, rapid exchange of information, reduction of transaction costs and simplification of communication between market participants.