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By Felicity Ussher, 22 October 1998 18:10

NEWS A group of banking giants have announced a framework to secure online transactions. They hope to provide a common standard for ecommerce that extends from corporates to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and eventually to individual consumers. ABN Amro, Bankers Trust, Bank of America, Barclays, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Hypo Vereinsbank are all backing the global trust enterprise. This is the first time that banks have offered to protect their customers' online deals. They plan to set up a joint company early next year, which will register customers and authenticate their business-to-business deals on the Web. The banks will offer digital certificates to any company registering with them, which can then be used as a single ID for transactions with other members. A spokeswoman for ABN Amro told Silicon.com that the first focus group will be on corporate transactions as "there is a very urgent need in this area". She said SME's will be involved at a later date, and consumers have not been ruled out in the future. "It is too early to say how much we will charge our members for the authentication service," she said, "but this is a profit-making company." The announcement comes as governments negotiate their own standard for secure ecommerce. Governments have not ruled out the possibility of a free service. The banks' joint subsidiary, which will be named early next year pending regulatory approval, will rely on root certificates from CertCo and digital verification technology from VeriSign.