Digital Commerce on the Web

by Adam Cain and Robert McGrath

Exchanging digital representations of money on computer networks is not a new idea. Once currency is in the banking system, it flies around in a numerical rather than physical form. (Business would move very slowly if a wad of bills had to move from one place to another for every debit and credit.) So the big question is: when will the exchanges between consumers, merchants, and banks be augmented-or even replaced-by electronic equivalents of credit cards, checkbooks, and cash? That time is now (or at least "real soon now").

A glance at business trade publications shows the business world is convinced that the Internet-and the World Wide Web in particular-constitutes the New Frontier of marketplaces. Billboards are popping up on the information superhighway in the form of WWW home pages that advertise products, and the rush is on to deploy technologies for buying and selling goods and services directly on the network. What has taken the home page shopping network so long to arrive?

A little history

Throughout its explosive growth in the 1980s, the Internet remained a primarily noncommercial medium. Many commercial, for- profit enterprises got connected to the network, but they did not use it to directly advertise or sell products. In the 1990s, however, the nature of the Internet started to shift. Corporations discovered that this young, growing medium could offer new opportunities in commerce and marketing; simultaneously, the U.S. government began shifting funding of the Internet to the private sector. Business and government alike thought digital commerce could be a way to make the information superhighway pay for itself. The Web, which relies on the Internet for connectivity, is ideally suited for a role in commerce because it is a versatile communication system with easy-to-use interfaces. Businesses find it easy to establish an information service because setting up shop is as simple as setting up a home page.

What is holding back this transition? Until recently, the main obstacles to wide-scale commerce on the Internet were:

  1. Internet users were too few-and their demographics too narrow- for a viable market.

  2. The Internet was too difficult for novice consumers to use.

  3. There was no secure, standard way to make or receive payments.

The advent of the World Wide Web and NCSA Mosaic effectively removed the first two obstacles. Mosaic makes browsing the Internet so easy that it's fun, helping introduce millions of new users to the Internet. However, the third obstacle remains: security and digital payment technologies are not widely used on the Web.

Researchers in NCSA's Software Development Group and Computing and Communications Group are investigating and implementing new technologies that employ cryptography to make the Web more secure, protect privacy, and authenticate Web communications. NCSA is also working to deploy novel systems that use these cryptographic mechanisms to pave the way for electronic payment on the WWW.

Forward to Digital Commerce on the Web

Adam Cain is a research programmer in SDG working on WWW security and digital payment issues. Robert McGrath is a C&C research programmer who works on NCSA's WWW server and other information servers.

access / Summer 1995 / NCSA