"We'll be ready when the wireless pipes are ready," Yankowski said...
Palm to beam Visa charges
January 07, 2001 09:08 AM PT
by Matt Berger
LAS VEGAS -- If you own a Palm,
buying via credit card is about to
get easier.
This newest application of the Palm
(PALM) introduced Saturday at the
Consumer Electronics Show, will allow users to make a
Visa credit card purchase by beaming account
information from a Palm handheld to a credit card
terminal.
The process, which enables a secure point-of-sale
transaction to occur just as if a credit or debit card had
been swiped by hand, can be made at any retailer that
attaches a small, infrared device onto its credit card
terminal.
While the concept has been discussed by several
companies in the past with little success, Palm has
recruited the help of financial giant Visa International,
a frontrunner in the development of secure digital credit
card transactions, to help convince retailers to join the
initiative.
"I think it's realistic. It's just a question of merchandising
it," said Palm CEO Carl Yankowski, who unveiled the
Palm electronic transaction during his keynote speech
at CES. "It will start with a lunatic fringe, like most
technology inventions, and I think it will take off from
there."
Beam it up
Yankowski demonstrated the application Saturday,
buying $2,000 worth of electronics products in about 30
seconds.
After downloading his Visa personal account
information into his Palm OS, Yankowski was able to
access his card by entering a password. When the sale
was rung up, he sent an infrared signal of encrypted
data from his Palm to a credit card terminal.
At that point, "the backend processing doesn't change,"
said Sue Gordon-Lathrop, vice president of Visa
International. It does, however, allow a user to keep an
accurate accounting record of credit card purchases in
the Palm.
For the process to work, the terminal must be outfitted
with a cheap piece of hardware developed by
manufacturers Ingenico and VeriFone, a division of
Hewlett-Packard (HWP), both partners in Saturday's
announcement.
The next step for Palm's proposed e-wallet, Yankowski
said, is to get personalized coupons and automatic
prompts on the Palm, as well as embed a driver's
license, passports and other personal identification
documents into the device.
"Eventually the Palm can replace everything that's in my
wallet," he said.
Palm's mobile e-commerce system will be up and
running for the next holiday season, Yankowski said.
Good ol' PC bashing
The demonstration was all part of Palm's mission to
convert PC users into handheld users. If anything is
apparent at the massive display of electronics and
computing devices at CES, the PC's days are
numbered. Which is why Yankowski spent the entirety of
his presentation pumping up Palm's concept of mobile
computing.
"I'm not here to bash PCs," Yankowski said. But he
spared no effort to point out the successes of his
company's devices over PCs, which he called slow and
lumbering.
Even Intel (INTC) President and CEO Craig Barrett,
speaking to a group of journalists from his company's
booth at CES Saturday, a day after delivering his own
keynote, was surprisingly short on PC news.
Although Barrett noted that "the microprocessor and PC
architecture is still our core business," he was
surrounded by Intel's new expanded line of non-PC
devices, including digital entertainment centers, MP3
players, Web tablets, in-car computers and
microchip-powered gadgets.
Barrett said all of those products will create new uses
for a PC that he says will eventually reinvigorate sales.
"We've seen a momentary leveling of PC sales," Barrett
said. "But the PC has become a digital brain. We're
really talking about expanding the reach of the PC."
Meanwhile, Palm says it has sold nearly 10 million of its
PDAs in a relatively young handheld market. The device
has become a popular device among the tech-savvy
population. It is also now used in classrooms, by
healthcare patients and on a number of Navy aircraft
carriers.
Palm's operating system has also become the staple for
mobile computing by companies including IBM (IBM),
Motorola (MOT) and its newest licensee GPS
developer Garmin (GRMN), which will use the platform
to create handheld GPS devices.
"Overall it isn't totally happening yet," Yankowski
admitted.
Palm's dealmaking
Yankowski also alluded to a number of recent
announcements by the company, including its deal
announced last week with Sprint (FON) to offer a
co-branded wireless Internet service.
He also plugged Palm's new portal, MyPalm.com, which
can be configured on the Internet and accessed via a
handheld device. The company developed that service
on its own, similar to wireless-accessible portals
created by independent developers including closely
held Clickmarks and AvantGo (AVGO).
Palm's partners in that venture include America Online
(AOL), Yahoo (YHOO), At Home (ATHM), among
others. The co-branded MyPalm portal will enable PDAs
users to make e-commerce transactions, use email and
instant messenger as well as browse any corner of the
Web.
Palm is also planning to announce in the next few
months its new line of smart phones as well as the Palm
OS 4.0. Yankowski said consumers can also expect a
not-too-distant release of Palm OS 5.0, which will
enable voice, multimedia and a number of wireless
standards including 3G.
"We'll be ready when the wireless pipes are ready,"
Yankowski said.
upside.com |
