Wireless madness has taken over in Finland, where people can now buy Cokes and play juke boxes using mobile phones. Telecom Finland has developed a digital device, now being incorporated into vending machines, which will debit callers' accounts when they make a purchase.
Some 40 percent of Finns have a cell phone, partly due to the fact that cell phone giant Nokia is based there.
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E-commerce compatibility: IBM and Hewlett-Packard's VeriFone subsidiary have agreed to make their respective Secure Electronic Payment software interoperable for credit-card payments over the Internet.
SET, which was initiated by MasterCard and Visa, accounts for the consumer (wallets), merchant (cash register), and banking (gateway) software that make up the system. The goal is to make the three components work together, regardless of which vendors' software is used.
IBM and VeriFone also plan to issue a Reference Guide so that SET-based software from other vendors will be compatible with their implementations. (11.Nov.97)
Reuters contributed to this report.
