Do you feel lucky?

I just saw May`s Wired magazine, and it`s interesting to realise that one`s ideas are never original or novel. The magazine featured an article about e-commerce and how trusting one`s trading partners has become the real issue in porting business into the digital age. It`s not about the reliability of the technology, and probably never has been.

The popular press still hasn`t gotten its mind out of the `reliability gutter` and still thinks that credit card transactions aren`t safe on the Net.

The funny (and strange) thing was that I have an article in this month`s Intelligence magazine that pretty much says the same thing. I guess in this post-modern age where ideas merely seem new but are actually regurgitated endlessly, that is hardly surprising.

I thought, though, that I`d summarise these ideas for my ITWeb column as well, because I believe that understanding them is important in driving forward our new trading paradigms.

While the popular press still hasn`t gotten its mind out of the `reliability gutter` and still thinks that credit card transactions aren`t safe on the Net, the rest of us know that technologically, we`re beyond the infant stages now and we can properly secure credit card numbers and user details.

We also know that the real insurance is never technological. Everyone who has thought e-trading through will have come to the conclusion that the secret in making distance-ordering a success doesn`t lie in carefully separating financial from ordering mechanisms (although in the first line of defense against intruders, that`s an important thing to remember), but that the international credit card accounting and insurance systems are the key to security.

Customers in online transactions require a `security of mind`, which is amply provided by the abuse insurance they pay on their credit cards. Every day, we give our credit cards to waiters in restaurants, who take them away for more than 10 minutes. We have no control over what they do with those cards while they are out of our sight, but we don`t worry about it because we know that there is an administrative recourse in case something goes wrong. The same mechanisms, of course, work in Internet transactions, and it is quite possible to ask for merchant refunds across international borders.

Ironically, it is the existing credit card system that has really broken down the borders between SA and its international trading partners, not the new political dispensation. Not only are customers and merchants protected against security abuses, but it`s the credit card system that actually empowers us to buy and sell consumer goods and services internationally in the first place. The Internet, which is not really a trading mechanism but a transport and shopping environment, is a good delivery system and provides a front end for an age-old (well, in technology terms age-old) trading mechanism.

In consumer e-commerce, the middle man isn`t quite as finished as some would have us believe. The guiding question of all interactive shopping is the issue of trustworthiness. You can buy almost anything via the Web today (perhaps it`s not practical to buy groceries from a North American merchant if you`re in Johannesburg, but...), but do you trust you are buying from? Even if they understand that they can probably get their money back from their bank if they try hard enough, do consumers actually make buying decisions based on Web site catalogues?

I, for one, do, but only under certain circumstances. I have purchased books, CDs and software from overseas vendors before, and mostly without glitches (if you`ll disregard the slight run-in I had with Music Boulevard, as reported in a previous column). I do this mostly when I can`t find something locally, though, at least in the case of CDs and books. Anyone who`s ever tried ordering a book from a local dealer will understand why. In the case of software, availability is often a motivator, but more often than not, it`s price. With SA vendors making a mint on imported software, buying something through the Web is an attractive way to save money. In the case of a small utility such as WinZip, for instance, you save fully R200 or more. Of course, the receiver might have something to say about import duties and VAT, but what do they expect me to do? Declare an Internet transaction? Not until there are proper tax laws in place, and even then they`d probably have to figure out a way of tracing it first. But that`s the stuff of another column.

The last frontier in e-commerce, I think, is the question of trust. Do you trust your online merchant as much as the guy down the street? Do you believe that the merchandise you ordered and paid for will actually arrive in your mailbox? Do you trust the South African postal service not to loose your parcels? What makes you buy from one merchant and not another? What makes CDNow trustworthy, for instance? Is it their comprehensive range of offerings or their user-friendly interface?

Do you like the fact that Amazon.com has a personalised list of recommendations whenever you go back after your first transaction? Or do you, like me, find it a little creepy, sort of like walking into a Pick `n Pay and seeing the cashiers grin at you in the knowledge that you bought two pounds of potatoes the last time you were there? Would you rather be anonymous?

Right now there are still numerous issues to be sorted out regarding interactive commerce, but they are mostly psychological. They relate mostly to interface design and to the question of just how much personalisation and one-to-one trading is enough, and how much is too much? Sometimes, when ordering, you will inevitably ask yourself whether you feel lucky today. Well, do you, punk? It`s still a wild frontier out there, but it`s also a cool place. Not for the faint-hearted, though.