Editor’s Corner:
SHOW ME THE E-MONEY!

If you’ve read through this issue, especially the article on page 2, "Online Shoppers Can Kiss Credit Cards Good-bye," you might be wondering when you can schedule a time to go have the iris of your eye scanned into a database so you can buy music over the Web. You have credit card phobia and wouldn’t think of using your credit card online. Or maybe you don’t have a credit card. You’re an ATM only kind of person. If you are – then there’s a free video camera awaiting you. Just when we more affluent or reckless types whip out our cards, you’re going to peer into that camera, gaze into the abyss and approve your purchases faster than you can wink. Then whammo, some electronic applet goes into your bank account and pulls the funds. Now that’s some way to pay your bills!

This holiday season more than promises to break all re-cords for online shopping even though we’re told that the money spent online only represents about 3 percent of holiday spending. The CEO of Cash Technologies claims that more than half of Americans do not have credit cards. It seems if e-commerce is going to work, we need these iris scanners and ATM payments. Look at all those people who can’t shop online.

But maybe we need to know more about why people don’t have credit cards. Perhaps they’re not really candidates for online shopping or micro-transactions no matter how small the amounts involved.

It’s a marketing challenge for sure. Hopefully those companies working on monetary alternatives for the online world will be able to launch these new approaches to collecting money without losing all of their own. If online commerce is going to work, we need their solutions to work and help make e-commerce ventures profitable.