From the Editor-In-Chief

A s we sit down to write each Green Sheet, we ask ourselves several questions: Are the stories we are working on timely? Is the information relevant to an ISO’s focused market niche? That is, is it information that will create a sales and income opportunity in the near-term? Is it motivational and/or inspirational? Finally, is it important to the inter-workings and understanding of the current marketplace or its evolution? The following IrFM story falls into this last category.

In our story development throughout last year, I did not believe that the time was yet right to share the information about the development of a non-proprietary payment protocol that can essentially be viewed as laying common track for everyone to use. First, the concepts we have been working on needed to be bounced off enough different industry stakeholders to find the obvious flaws. Second, enough stakeholders needed to become interested to generate broad-based design ideas that would fuel the creation of a focus group.

Recent developments have convinced us that the time has come to begin publicly discussing the concept behind IrFM. Those developments include recent approval of a Special Interest Group (SIG) by the Infrared Device Association (IrDA), success in the presentation to numerous interested organizations in the banking, equipment, and communications industries, strong interest from CommerceNet as a significant retail component, and an invitation to present the concept to FSTC March 15-16, 2000.

As of this writing, the various interests are represented by a to-be-assembled focus group for consumers. Representatives include CrossCheck Inc., and its investment and joint venture partner Personal Solutions Corporation (who along with the business development staff of CrossCheck, have conceived and funded the efforts to date); companies such as 3Com, HP, and Sharp for the appliance segment; VeriFone, Hypercom, Micros, and NCR for the POS segment; Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, and the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) for the communication segment, and hopefully, FSTC for banking and technology. With this early group, we expect to lay the initial groundwork for establishing market needs, technical designs, business functions, and a prototype, with 3com’s PalmV Manager working towards pilot funding for proof of concept.

The Green Sheet is sharing the substance of this white paper for our readers who may wish to contribute ideas and/or join the IrFM project at any level.

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