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1. This case was prepared for educational purposes. It provides a basis for discussion and does not necessarily demonstrate either effective or ineffective management practice. Resources for the development of this case were provided by the London Business School. It was prepared by Blake Ives with the assistance of Michael Earl. Blake Ives is a professor at Louisiana State University. The copyright for the case is owned by London Business School and Blake Ives. Permission is hereby granted to duplicate for noncommercial educational purposes. We appreciate the assistance of the Centres for Virtual Systems at Louisiana State University, Melbourne University, and University College Dublin in helping to distribute the case electronically
2. Developed at MIT and named after its creators (Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman), RSA is a "public key" encryption scheme in which potential recipients of encrypted messages (including payments) publish their public key which is then used by senders to encrypt messages. The recipient then uses the private half of the key for decryption.
3. "No settlement for individual transactions" meant that an individual transaction, such as a disbursement from the card to a merchants point-of-sale device, did not require a separate confirmation that the customers account was good for the amount. Rather, the value was stored on the card itself.
4.Computer and communications capacity for centralized payments systems had to be designed to handle peak demand, which could be a factor of 10 greater than average demand. The requirement to maintain a back up system comparable to the original, meant that excess capacity could be as much as 20 times that normally required.
5. Sale of alcoholic beverages to be taken away from the premises where they were acquired.
6. Announced in February of 1996. Technical participants in establishing the SET standards included GTE, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape Communications Corp., SAIC, Terisa Systems and Verisign. American Express have also now endorsed the SET standards. SET is based on special encryption technology from RSA Data Security. Secure services were expected for the fourth quarter of 1996
7.By June of 1996 VISA cash pilots were underway in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, New Zealand, Spain and the US (1.5 million cards issued at the Atlanta Olympics), with pilots planned for the next year in Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, New York City, and the UK
8.Going for Olympic Gold Cards", The Economist, March 30, 1996.
9. Ibid.
10. In 1996 India had over 10 million phone lines installed with expectations of another 26.5 million, costing US$22.5 billion by the 2000. China expects to have 140 million lines installed by that same year at a cost of US$120 billion
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