Irish software company, Trintech Group has made a major advance in its efforts to lead the field in the electronic commerce industry. In conjunction with Visa and several other leading technology suppliers it has performed the world's first secure Internet purchase using their 1.0 version of the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) standard.

While previous transactions have been conducted online using the 0.0 version, this was only a working model. The new version is the "full metal jacket end-to-end transaction, and the first to comply fully in the world with the SET standard, and receive Visa endorsement," says Mr Cyril McGuire, managing director of Trintech. Widely endorsed as the global standard for the use of payment cards over the Internet, it was developed in association with Visa International, Microsoft, VeriSign, RSA Data Security, Compaq and Tandem.

The online purchase took place yesterday at Visa's regional member meeting in Puerto Rico, when Dr Egidio Ianella, president of Visa Argentina bought a bottle of wine from Disco, a supermarket chain in Argentina over the Internet.

While Visa is the first credit card company to take this application of the electronic commerce standard on board, the Trintech software will allow all card transactions online.

The development will permit cardholders to shop on the Internet with the same confidence as they can in the physical world. The SET is widely accepted in the industry as the basis of all future credit and debit electronic commerce payment systems, comparable in ways to the International Standards Organisation (ISO) quality standard for businesses. The first Irish company to implement the new transaction standard will be Bank of Ireland, according to Mr McGuire.

The Trintech headquarters and manufacturing facility are located in Dublin. With offices in Germany, the UK, the US and Singapore, the company currently employs 115 people, and is expected to seek a listing on the US NASDAQ market in 1997.