British Telecommunications Plc says that investment information from financial publisher Hemmington Scott is proving to be the most popular service on the BT Array micropayments trial which started four weeks ago. John Skipper, BT’s head of banking and payments, says a check for a four-figure amount has been sent to Hemmington Scott, which has taken over 500 orders for its UK company analysis reports via Array. Purchasers download the single-page reports in Adobe Acrobat format from the internet. John Suckling, Hemmington Scott’s electronic information manager, says that many of the orders have come from North America, Australia, Japan and the Middle East, markets which the UK-based publisher has not previously reached. Many customers who have bought our service using BT Array have done so on more than one occasion, suggesting that once they have traded over the internet, they have the confidence to do so again, he adds. BT Array allows internet users to buy goods, software or information costing between a few pence and a few pounds. Participants include audio CD retailer CD Online, Which? Online and EMAP’s Internet Magazine. To subscribe to Array, users forward their credit card details and e-mail address to BT over a secure connection. They then choose their password and account name and can buy items from any merchant displaying the BT Array micropayment logo. BT consolidates users’ purchases and charges them to their credit card once a month or once the micropayments have reached 35 pounds.
