The most common method of making Internet purchases is for the buyer to enter credit-card details on a form displayed on his or her screen. This is then submitted to the seller's website and the goods are dispatched by post or courier. For some years, it was believed the major factor holding up development of online commerce was concern over the security of these transactions.

The visitor to the Bank of Ireland website sees a message: "soon problems with security when shopping over the Internet will be a thing of the past". This confidence is based on the development of an agreed standard for secure transactions, known as SET. But the security assurance has been there since the site was established more than a year ago, and the SET standard has still not been firmly established.

The recent ceremonial digital signing by the Taoiseach and President Clinton was intended to promote confidence that the security concerns were being, or had been, addressed. They declared: "electronic commerce will improve the standard of living of citizens in the United States and Ireland . . . Small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular, will benefit from new opportunities to sell their products to a world-wide market."

That is the theory. In practice, Irish small and medium-sized enterprises are showing no great enthusiasm for electronic commerce. A recently published survey - undertaken for a network equipment supplier, 3Com - indicated that only one in five Irish companies employing between 150 and 500 people is using e-commerce.