By Charles P.Wallace

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1119.

Web, but for consumers, booting up can be a very frustrating experience

A growing number of the Old World's businesses are learning to love the

Why are Europeans still so cool to e-commerce?

Could the future of the Internet in Europe be a place called Egg? A division of British financial services company Prudential, Egg is the offbeat name for its foray into online banking. The electronic doors at Egg swung open at 00:01 A.M. on a Sunday morning in October, underlining the difference with conventional banks. More important, because Prudential has no capital tied up in branches or tellers, Egg offered savings accounts at 8% per annum interest, more than a point higher than rival bricks-and-mortar banks. In the following week, a tidal wave of 1.7 million people surfed to Egg's Website, leaving the bank more than a little embarrassed because of its slow response times. The number of new accounts is now being disclosed, but the sign-up rate was 20 times more than expected, according to the company, which had to hire 250 new employees to deal with the crush. “I used to think two-thirds of financial services would be conducted on the Web in 15 years”, says CEO Mike Harris. “Now I think it will be much, much sooner than that”.

Many in the business of electronic commerce have their fingers crossed that Harris is right. Though Internet usage is finally beginning to spread across Europe, it remains embarrassingly behind the U.S. in the adoption of online business. Internet-related companies such as Cisco and a host of market researchers are predicting a huge boom in e-business, but shopping online is likely to trail the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

Fortune

Text 5. Mentafact text: a poem

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day;

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them all away!