BT backs Trustbase Net banking

NEWS BT plans to storm ahead in the hosted Internet banking market through an alliance with JCP software announced today. The telecoms company will take on JCP's Trustbase platform which was unveiled last year as the next generation of secure ecommerce computing technology. The launch of Trustbase was fortified with a licensing deal with Sun Microsystems and endorsements from Netscape and Virgin Net. Chris Philips, a spokesman for JCP, said that BT will use the technology to build hosted Internet banking services. The telco will offer the services to existing banks and new entrants to the retail banking sector - including retailers such as Tesco and Sainsbury's. BT's involvement is an important user endorsement for Trustbase and Philips said that the partnership could trigger a lot more activity in the UK online banking arena. "BT are clearly leaders among ebanking hosted services and the partnership will have the power to remove many of barriers to entry for the next generation of banking," he said. According to Philips, existing banking systems have two major shortcomings which make them unsuited to the Web. The first is that they are not set up to run on a wide variety of consumer devices - including personal digital assistants and mobile phones. And secondly, current banking systems do not incorporate any sort of electronic authentication processes, such as digital signatures. According to Philips, Trustbase solves both these problems. "By choosing Trustbase, BT is clearly predicting that these two elements are going to be key to future banking," said Philips.