European Commission is aiming to fund a raft of electronic commerce research and development projects, which can boost interoperability, reliability, and security of online payment systems, a senior commission official said. It is something of increased importance. There will not be any extra money for electronic commerce but we are putting together work done in multimedia, technology for business processes and software technologies.
Interoperability has to be a priority.
At the end of the day everyone accepts that it's a global marketplace. For example we have a small company in a country like Crete that might have its main customer in Japan,' he said. Rosalie Zobel, Esprit manager in charge of this focussed call, said interoperability of electronic payment systems such as smart cards, electronic purses and the development of payment systems that can deal with small payments down to fractions of an ecu would be a priority. Aside from the electronic commerce booster, other priorities for this March tranche of Esprit will focus on interfaces, mobility and learning, Metakides said. If you just take ICT then you don't think of things like content and databases that are sure to be included,' he said.