<B> Tech Talk</B>
By Cheryl Rosen, Technology Editor
<B>Visa Is In The Chips</B>
Visa International has formed a Central Approval Authority to bring together 21,000 member banks and chip card vendors from around the world in a huge migration to smart cards, it announced at the Visa Partner Program for Vendors '98 conference in San Francisco late last month. Where today Visa has 33 million chip cards in circulation, mostly in France, its "goal is to have 600 million chip cards on the market over the next five years," Ryan Mikolasik, director of corporate relations, told BTN. The CAA will offer a single testing and approval body for suppliers of credit and debit cards, Visa cash cards and cards for frequent traveler applications, and facilitate the development of an infrastructure of chip card readers worldwide.
Visa by summer also will switch to the new Java technology for smart cards, allowing a single computer program on a chip to be used in many different types of cards and card readers. The use of Java also will facilitate a shift from single-purpose cards to multi-function cards. "Smart cards today are either credit or debit cards--and our tests of stored-value cards in Atlanta and New York have shown that single-function cards are not the killer application that will make smart cards take off," Mikolasik said. "What we need is a bank in your pocket, a suite of financial and loyalty applications on a single card." The first Java-based cards will debut in Europe this summer.
<a name="1"><B>AXI Claims 70 Customers</B>
American Express' AXI automated booking system is on a roll, with 70 corporate customers altogether, including 10 new ones signed in the past two months, according to public affairs manager Melissa Abernathy. "The key to the speed with which we've been able to implement new customers is our MCI extranet, and the fact that most companies are comfortable letting employees access the site over the Internet," she said. The MCI host Website for AXI contains a master version of the system that can be customized for new clients in about two weeks--far faster than relying on the corporation to install the system on its own server inside its firewall, Abernathy said. "After the first few installations, we came up with a standard procedure to install corporate policy and walk customers through the process, pretty much using a checklist," she noted.
You'll have to take Amex's word for all this, though, as it declined to reveal the number of tickets being booked in AXI, the names of its customers or even the price. Abernathy would say only that the pricing model includes set-up, transaction and ongoing maintenance fees "not yet standardized, but rather integrated into the customer's overall relationship with American Express."
<a name="2"><B>System One Completes Migration To Amadeus</B>
System One on March 24 ceased operation as an independent computer reservation system and became fully integrated with its parent CRS, Madrid-based Amadeus Global Travel Distribution. For System One, the cost of the conversion included $100 million in investments in hardware and software development over the past three years and over 1,000 man-years spent on the project. Having completed this "unprecedented accomplishment in this industry," the CRS now will be able to "concentrate on customer growth and retention strategies, and hit the marketplace aggressively with new products and services," said System One Amadeus president and CEO Jim Davidson.
<a name="3"><B>New Generation of Screen Phones Due</B>
Connecting to the Internet without a computer at hand should be easier and more affordable than ever in the next few months, as a new wave of screen phones allows travelers to hook into the Web. Not just meant to access e-mail, new phones from companies like Philips Consumer Communications and Cidco Inc. will allow users to view an entire Web page, or type in text through a built-in keyboard. Analysts said the high price of the new phones--at $500-$600, almost the cost of a computer--will inhibit demand at first. But as the price falls, eventually to about $200, usage will rise, and vice versa.
<a name="4"><B>Gates Talks Up Voice</B>
Voice recognition system developers got a morale boost this month when technology's main man, Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates, told attendees at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference that he believes the human voice, and not fingers on keyboards, will eventually become the primary interface between people and computers. Meanwhile, across the continent at the IBM Solutions Center in Hawthorne, N.Y., IBM executives noted with surprise that a recent poll of teenagers found that fully 71 percent chose a voice interface as the number-one development they would like to see for their computers.