UK-based Internet Technology Group and Wave Systems Corp of Lee, Massachusetts, have announced a joint venture to be called Globalwave. ITG has paid $5m to Wave to license its proprietary e-commerce technology: the WaveMeter chip. The technology works in a similar way to a charge card. Customers ‘charge up’ the chip with credits and use them to buy goods over the internet. But in order to access any goods, they have to be encrypted first and it is ITG’s role to persuade companies to sign up to the service. Richard Brockson, finance director with ITG said the technology was designed to make micro, or small, payments over the internet and not for purchasing large goods or products. A typical example would be a games manufacturer. Rather than selling the CD-ROM from a retail outlet, where the manufacturers’ margins are greatly reduced, the companies could instead encrypt the games and make them available for sale over the internet. The technology works on a ‘pay as you go’ basis whereby users are only charged when they play the game. But once he or she has spent 80% of the retail price, they automatically own the goods. ITG is currently marketing WaveMeter to media groups, record companies or any other type of organization where the payment level for the their goods or services is so low that they would never have considered selling over the internet, Brockson said. The ultimate aim is to create a standard for e-commerce by getting PC manufacturers to install the chip on the motherboard of every new PC launched in 1998. Brockson added that manufacturers would have an added incentive to use the technology because, under the deal, GlobalWave would give them a percentage of the sales for each customer using the service. The PC becomes a cash register, he said, adding manufacturers can continue to get a constant stream of revenue beyond the sale of the actual PC. The chip can also be installed as an upgrade, via a PC card, as part of an external modem, in a set-top box or even within a Digital Video Disk (DVD). Already IBM has said it will integrate the technology on its PC motherboards next year, and Standard Microsystems Corp (SMC), which makes input output (I/O) chips for PC manufacturers, is planning to use the chip on its circuit boards.
