A consortium of US financial and technology companies has developed an Electronic Check for use over the Internet. The group said that the electronic cheques will be sufficiently secure to be sent directly from customers to their recipients without needing to pass through a central clearing system. The consortium, which includes Citibank, the Bank of America, IBM Corp, National Semiconductor Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and the regional Bells’ Bell Communications Research, will initially use a standard PC Card modem, costing between $30 and $40, to verify the identity of the cheque writer. In the future they plan to use a Smart Card for this purpose, it said. The electronic cheque system has also been designed for third party services such as travellers’ cheque. The consortium intends to publish an open standard for electronic cheques that all banks could issue and receive, and it hopes to start trials of the system next year.
