Distribution: Translating EC Business

The hottest topic in banking circles for the past several years has been the idea of migrating a bank's entire business onto the Internet-an idea oft-mentioned, and still sometimes dismissed as improbable. But recent adaptations

of what has become a firmly established-indeed, practically mundane- channel are giving more than mere promise to that prospect.

NationsBank, for instance, is building that capability now, the first step of which has been rolled out as NationsBank Direct. While in its present incarnation the service merely allows corporate customers to handle various treasury functions over the Internet, it is intended, by the end of this year, to include much more.

The network will eventually encompass things that were traditionally viewed as EDI and will evolve into electronic commerce, says Nick Alex, a NationsBank division executive. "We're looking at it as a renovation of all electronic customer access with our corporate customers. The first release (this past November) is all about check payments," he says. "But we'll be including stop payments exceptions in January, foreign exchange and U.S. Dollar wire transfer capability in March, lockbox connectivity in May, and balance reporting in June or July."

Alex says that the bank is trying to encourage corporate adaptation of Internet technology with NationsBank Direct. "We're leading with the ability to connect to the bank to do your own transactions that would be initiated out of NationsBank, and could potentially flow to your trading partners, having traveled through us on the Internet. But we are actually intending to install an EDI structure that will in fact provide a means for clients to do business with one another over an Internet connection," he says. "Today, we help clients do payments and receipts over a value-added network; in the future, we intend to install a system where clients could install storefronts for electronic commerce, (while NationsBank would) provide an end-to-end translation role that transcends EDI as I've known it."

Included in the planned offering: Helping clients without Internet expertise to use the Internet by taking their information and acting as a "translator" into whatever format that client's customer needs. "We're really getting into an end-to-end translator mode with Web forms, all sponsored by NationsBank servers on the Internet." Alex says this capability should be fully rolled out by year-end 1998.

-reinbach tfn.com

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