To the thread,
This is a test. What does this news release mean to USWDA? Did they compete for this business? Why is the 900 pound gorilla in the market not competing with USWDA on CDPD??
Grab the pebble grasshopper!
p.s. to Rob, You're right, the emperor has lovely clothes! Please do ignore me. And by the way how is the weather in Sacramento? Nice try with the bio. You so sneaky!
Tuesday December 16 10:23 AM EST
HP's VeriFone, NEC Team On Internet Payment
By Samuel Perry
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard's VeriFone electronic
payments subsidiary said it has reached agreement with NEC to develop and
market Internet payment products in Japan.
The agreement, to be formally announced, gives VeriFone an important and
powerful ally in a country where the company has traditionally met stiff
domestic competition.
Already, VeriFone said it has won the commitment of Sumitomo Bank Ltd.'s
Sumitomo Credit Services Inc. Visa card unit to be the first to deploy
VeriFone's products with a set of extensions designed for the Japanese
market.
Japan is tipped to be one of the fastest-growing markets for Internet
commerce, with research firm International Data of Framingham, Mass.,
estimating it will reach $18 billion by the year 2001. All of Asia,
including Japan, is set to eclipse Europe's Internet commerce by that time.
George Hoyem, vice president and general manager of the Internet Commerce
Division at VeriFone, said in an interview the partnership was geared toward
rapid deployment of payment systems needed for doing substantial commerce on
the Internet.
"We think we'll be the first out in Japan," Hoyem said, adding he was
expecting to begin deployment of the VeriFone products in Japan in the first
quarter of 1998.
In the physical market, where VeriFone sells the point of sale" devices and
equipment and services connecting merchants to banks for card purchases,
VeriFone controls over two-thirds of the market for electronic payment
products worldwide.
Scott Smith, principal analyst Internet commerce strategies at Current
Analysis, a research firm in Sterling, Va., said the partnership gives
VeriFone a boost in an emerging new marketplace, while enabling NEC to
partner with the company which has been a payments leader around the globe.
"It's not a market where they (VeriFone) have had a great history of (large)
market share, in terms of the POS terminals, as opposed to other parts of
the world where they are three quarters of the market," Smith said.
Japan is viewed as a key consumer market for retailers in other parts of the
world, especially in Europe and North America, who may expect Internet
shopping and payments from Japan to follow the sharp growth of catalog sales
to Japan.
"A lot of U.S. and European merchants want to target Japanese markets with
their Web site," said Hoyem. "A Japanese customer could now link into
Western Europe and buy (goods)."
Sumitomo Credit, which has 1.7 million merchant customers, will be first to
deploy VeriFone products that include the JPO extensions, which allow for
back and forth negotiation and variable payment options that simulate
face-to-face buying. |
