These are all schemes that have been developed to process commercial transactions over the Web without transmitting credit card numbers. During the sign up procedure he provides his credit card number and contact information, and receives a First Virtual account number in return. Thereafter, to make purchases at participating online vendors, the user provides his First Virtual account number in lieue of his credit card information. First Virtual later contacts him by e-mail, and he has the chance to approve or disapprove the purchase before his credit card is billed. First Virtual is in operation now and requires no special software or hardware on the user's or merchant's sides of the connection.
Users then make purchases electronically and the E-cash is debited from their checking accounts.
This system is currently in development and has not been released for public use. It also appears to require special client software to be installed on both the user's and the merchant's computers. In credit card mode, the user installs specialized software on his computer. When the WWW browser needs to obtain a credit card number, it invokes the Cybercash software which pops up a window that requests the number. The number is then encrypted and transmitted to corresponding software installed on the merchant's machine.