When fog of the politicical flunky's hype disperses in the cold wind of fiscal reality, Irish E-Commerce is left standing there in quite a state. It is a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". The glorious images of a totally automated ordering system with real time funds transfer from the customer's credit card to the merchant's bank account are only that - images. The reality of E-Commerce in Ireland is that of a paper ridden business. Credit card transactions are handled manually, with authorisation being obtained for transactions over the floor limit. The goods are still sent out via mail and the transaction is still treated as a card-absent transaction by the creditcard company.

Most companies on the internet in Ireland are using virtual servers for their WWW store fronts. The costs of obtaining a leased line and installing their own servers are beyond most businesses in Ireland. While many of the European and US virtual server companies offer SSL as part of the basic package, SSL is a costly extra on Irish ISPs. The result is that the companies doing business on the internet offer alternative methods of transacting business. The most obvious one is the inclusion of a telephone or fax number.

Some customers do not trust the security of an ordinary unencrypted order form on the internet. These order forms are typically e-mailed to a company's e-mail account. However it is just as easy for a customer to print out the order form and fax it to the number provided.

Some of the Irish banks are moving towards true E-Commerce solutions though it is going to take a significant time for them to become as adavanced as some of the European and US banks. Though conservative by nature, some Irish banks have embraced the internet and now offer internet banking. This makes things easy for the customer but the Irish banks will have to move towards making Internet commerce easier for businesses. One of the most interesting exhibits  at the recent Internet World show in Dublin came from a company called Worldpay. It is a bank approved internet payments processer. A lot of Irish businesses were paying very close attention because there seems to be little activity in that direction by most of the Irish banks.