Features

Intermediary services

Most merchant traders prefer direct payments by debit or credit card, but some will also accept payments from schemes such as PayPal and Nochex. Large, well-established companies are likely to process credit card payments through their own secure servers, but a popular alternative for smaller businesses is to divert buyers to a shared secure server operated by a company such as WorldPay (www.worldpay.com), which is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

WorldPay processes payments on behalf of its customers and handles currency conversions. For buyers, the experience of being diverted to WorldPay from the trader's own site is initially unsettling but the payment process is legitimate, costs the buyer nothing and does not require any sign-up or verification procedures.

If all you want is a secure method of paying bills, check out the BillPay service operated by Alliance and Leicester (www.billpayment.co.uk). Bills from a large number of councils, water authorities and housing associations can be paid online using any UK debit card and certain credit cards as well. Payments take four days to process and you do not need to be a customer of Alliance and Leicester.

A rather different type of payment service is Click and Buy (www.clickandbuy.com). It is designed primarily to pay for goods and services

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that are delivered online, such as iTunes and software downloads or mobile phone services. Click and Buy has 7,000 merchant traders and 81/2 million members. Payment for the services you buy is settled once a month by a deduction from a credit or debit card, by direct debit from a bank account or through your BT phone bill.

Digital wallets

The Digital Wallet format was agreed back in 1999 between major players in the financial and computing worlds including IBM, MasterCard and Microsoft. A protocol called the Electronic Commerce Modelling Language (ECML) was evolved, but despite efforts by IBM (Consumer Wallet), Microsoft (MSN Wallet), Yahoo! (Yahoo Wallet) and others, it has never taken off and become popular.

Its name suggests it is a store of 'banked' electronic credit that can be drawn upon to pay for goods and services, but it actually stores details of payment cards held by a user, together with a shipping address and other personal information such as might be required by an online merchant. Users of digital wallets do not have to reveal their card numbers to a vendor, and the wallet saves tedious form-filling by automatically providing a shipping address.

Despite the public's historical disinterest in digital wallets, the introduction of Google Checkout (https://checkout.google.com) might well change all this. Once you've registered your preferred payment card and delivery details with Google, you can shop with any trader offering Google Checkout and you won't have to reveal your credit card number or even your email address, and your delivery details will be passed on automatically.

The service is free to use, and offers a centralised means of tracking all online purchases through a Purchase History option that appears on the Google Account page after you have signed up. Initially, the scheme was aimed only at users in the US, but a transfer to the UK was announced as this article went to press. Since it was possible for Google account holders in the UK to register in advance for Google Checkout, it is likely that take-up of the service will be swift.