More than half of complaints concern on-line transactions (55%).

He said he expected some resistance to on-line transactions by brokers accustomed to conventional approaches.

An example would be on-line transactions like home banking or ads on Prodigy.

He said more attention needed to be paid to measuring intangibles like insurance coverage, rental activity, wholesale trade and on-line transactions.

Computers do the same, and the lack of a glyph key is not a problem for on-line transactions in the new currency.

Somebody remembered that she used a public computer in one of the shops for some kind of on-line transaction.

As companies begin offering on-line transactions, the traditional virtues of the mainframe - security, high throughput - become attractive.

"The company wants to take a tiny piece of every on-line transaction that passes through its gates."

It does appear, however, that such a proposal may increase the security of on-line transactions between entities in different countries.

But there is still a debate over which on-line transactions are so sensitive that passwords should be required.