Effecting an electronic payment from customers to vendors over the Internet is disclosed. A vendor (111) offers a product to potential customers (102) over the Internet. A customer browsers the Internet and the customer has a mobile cellular telephone (202) configured to receive premium rate mobile terminating text messages. Transaction details are transmitted from the vendor to the browsing customer. Order details are then transmitted from the browsing customer to the vendor that require a payment to be made by the customer. In order to effect payment, a plurality of premium rate text messages are transmitted to the telephone (202).