Irish electronic payment vendor Trintech is part of a group that has developed a new standard for a software credit card that will enable one-click shopping on the Net.

The standard, announced last week, will enable consumers to buy goods and services on the Net by dragging and dropping their virtual credit card onto a form rather than going through the laborious process of filling out credit card details online.

Called Electronic Commerce Modelling Language, or ECML, the standard is backed by an army of finance heavyweights including Microsoft, Visa, American Express, AOL, Compaq, CyberCash, IBM and Sun Microsystems, MasterCard, and Transactor Networks.

Trintech pioneered the technology with America Online. ECML is also being supported by major online stores including beyond.com, Dell Computer, fashionmall.com, healthshop.com, iGo Corp., Nordstrom's, Omaha Steaks, and reel.com.

"Our e-card looks like what you have in your wallet but is totally secure because the customer must enter a password when making a purchase," explained Mr John McGuire, CEO of Trintech, which was first to market with a virtual credit card product that complies to the new standard. The deal comes at a good time for Trintech as the company is believed to be considering an initial public offering on the Nasdaq. The precise timing is unclear and despite Trintech's $25 million (€23.8 million) in annual sales revenue and $20 million of investment capital raised last year, the company may back out of the IPO if the stock market looks shaky. If that happens, it's likely that Trintech will postpone its IPO until later this year or early next year.

"All I can say is that we are hitting our targets. In the last year we have grown our operations in the US, Asia and South America," said Mr McGuire.

Meanwhile, electronic commerce vendors are hoping the new ECML standard will help further boost the $101 billion electronic commerce market.

Until now the market, although successful, has been held back by a number of competing standards for electronic cash and electronic-purse schemes.

ECML differs from traditional electronic wallet and online credit card schemes because it is an open standard, so potentially any credit card vendor or online store can adopt it, according to Mr Seamus McAteer, director of Web Technologies at the New York-based Internet consultancy Jupiter Communications.

"The industry can only benefit from adopting this standard," said Mr Blake Irving, general manager of Microsoft's consumer and commerce group. "It can only make the electronic commerce pie bigger for everybody." Previously the online stores have resorted to accepting users' credit cards over the Internet, an unsatisfactory solution according to analysts.

Consumers are often reluctant to go through the necessary hassles of entering in the information requested when make a purchase online. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by Jupiter Communications, nearly 27 per cent of online purchasers abandon buying products when confronted with credit card forms.

Consumers are also nervous about using their credit card on the Internet, and rightly so. For instance, two years ago the FBI arrested a man in San Francisco airport who was trying to sell 150,000 credit card numbers which he had stolen from sites on the Net.

"The standard governs how the desktop software or virtual credit card will talk to the back-end electronic commerce or merchant server," said Mr Steve Ryan, senior vice-president of emerging technologies for Visa USA. "How the companies choose to implement that standard is up to them. Security will be treated as a separate issue."

Still, while the new ECML standard does not govern virtual credit card security standards, many vendors such as Trintech are including password verification so that online thieves will not be able to use stolen credit card numbers.

Other vendors also plan to have a virtual credit card standard out by the end of the year. Microsoft, for example, will include the ECML in its new Passport online payment product.

"We're also working on a servers-based technology, so a user could use their virtual credit card from any computer or terminal connected to the Internet," said Mr Irving.

Sun and IBM are expected to announce integration of the new technology into their JavaWallet product offerings.

Meanwhile, Trintech will launch its e-card product, called NetIssuer, on Monday as part of its industrial strength electronic payment system for banks and credit card companies. These companies will then offer NetIssuer to their customers. To obtain a virtual credit card, Net users will be required to go to their bank or credit card company's website and enter a password. The bank's computer system will then download a piece of code to the user's computer.

"It's a great idea, but consumers should be aware that it could lead to more impulse buying," said Mr McAteer.