Visa preps online shopping plug-in to take on Web giants

This looks a bit like a late-in-the-day attempt from a pre-net dinosaur to keep up with competitors that understand the market better.

Being able to store card and address details is fairly useful but don't PayPal, Google and Amazon all offer that already?

The rest of the features strike me as gimmicks from a firm trying to throw in something 'networky'. Inviting friends to give their advice on purchases? Via e-mail? As for the 'community' site, doesn't look as though anyone has used it for at least a month.

Timing is an essential part of innovation, and history shows that it can take decades or more for the right solution to take hold. Many of today's "latest" trends are actually not new at all, but that doesn't necessarily deem to be any more or less valuable. PayPal's current mobile payments offerings were first tried in the late 90's, Google Checkout is not really any different than the e-wallet's of the dot.com era, and credit cards were first launched in the late 1800's before languishing for a half a century (check my web site to see the world's first). Just because Visa Rightcliq isn't new doesn't mean it isn't of value, because in marketing problem-solving requires the right timing. Javelin's view is that cloud computing will drive a resurgence in interest in federated identity schemes, and it's wise for the payment networks to try once again to make e-wallets work before an industry consortium comes up with a solution. Consumer and merchant market research data shows that convenience factors are holding back higher levels of e-commerce growth, and that's why Javelin believes that e-wallets will eventually take off.  

http://paymenttalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/you-would-think-visa-would-know.html

One of the things I forgot to mention in my post is that another reason why anything that requires a software download is doomed is that many companies forbid their employees to install any unapproved 3rd party software and many people use their company computers to shop on line.  At least when Visa created Verified by Visa, they recognized one of the many problems with the original attempt, SET, which required an ewallet install.  I guess all the people that lived through SET are now gone from Visa.