By Ray Van Eng (05/29/97)                       

Hundreds of Bank of America employees will take part in a pilot project that Visa International and BoA will launch this summer to allow them to use the Visa Cash stored-value cards to make small purchases over the Internet at selected retailer web sites.

Broderbund Software Inc., CardMart Greetings and Newsletter Technologies Inc. will be the first merchants to join the six month program with serveral other companies to follow later.

After loading the Visa Cash with money, the cardholder can go shopping at particpating cyberstores. By selecting Visa Cash for payment, the cardholder would then insert the Visa Cash card into a smart card reader attached to his/her PC and with a mouseclick or two, the transaction would be initiated with the purchase amount deducted from the card for settlement with the bank later.

Visa says that Visa Cash is just another way that the credit card giant could help its member financial institutions to migrate their credit and debit card businesses to a multi-application smart card platform for greater security and protection against fraud.

This BoA and Visa Cash Internet commerce trial in the United States will be followed by two other similar programs which will be launched later this year by Visa and its international partners.

Smart Commerce Japan, an initiative sponsored by the Japanese government, Toshiba and a number of financial institutions will begin this fall. Projet e-COMM, a French consortium founded by Visa, will explore the business opportunities involving the use of smart cards and the secure electronic transactions (SET) protocols over the Internet.