In September Rabobank, ABN AMRO and ING announced the development of a Dutch standard for internet payments. The standard protocol essentially routes the shopper from the site of the merchant to the shopper's internet-banking environment, where payment is made in the usual manner. After the payment the merchant gets a guarantee en the shopper is brought back to the merchant environment.
The standard will be available to merchants and consumers from mid 2005 onwards. The name of the standard: Ideal, was announced during an e-banking track of e-Netherlands conference on November 11. It is expected that other Dutch banks will also incorporate the standard for their customers.
Research by Multiscope showed that 87 % of the Dutch population find the standard a good idea; 60 % expect to immediately make use of it. Especially a bunch of those consumers that at times still fear the Internet (70%) expect to use the product.
The poll also outlined that the awareness of bank internet payment products was:
- ING's paypal like scheme Way2pay: 32 %
- Rabodirect betalen: 28 %
- ABN AMRO E-Wallet: 14 %
- Rabo Minitix: 3 %
- ING Tootz: 1 %
Of these current payment products, only Minitix will continue to be offered by Rabobank. Rabodirect betalen will become Ideal; the other schemes will be dismantled.
By the way, during the conference it was stated that the current level of Internet payments in the Netherlands is 10 million. This number allows for some further calculations and estimations as to the total number of internet-payments in the EU. But I will leave that to others.
