Pan Asian e-Commerce Alliance

1 February 2002 : Pan-Asian E-Commerce Alliance Grows again at Summit Held in Taipei

The Pan Asian e-Commerce Alliance (PAA) held its 7th Steering Committee meeting in Taipei from 31st January to 1st February 2002. The meeting was attended by CrimsonLogic, Infoshare, KTNET, TRADELINK, TRADE-VAN, and TEDI Club. Representatives from DagangNet of Malaysia also attended the full meeting by invitation.

Speaking on behalf of the Alliance after the meeting, Mr Justin Yue said, "We are extremely pleased with the significant progress we have made in these two days. Given the readiness of TEDI Club to enter its commercial phase, we have taken the deliberate decision to confer formal Founding Member status on TEDI Club." Previously TEDI Club took part in PAA activities as an observer. It is now PAA's sixth Founding Member.

"By invitation, DagangNet also attended our PAA Steering Committee meeting for the first time." Said Mr Yue. "During the course of our meeting, we had a comprehensive presentation from DagangNet of the work that it does, and clearly there is demonstrable synergy between its work and the common objectives of PAA." Mr Yue expressed confidence that DagangNet will apply to join the PAA very shortly. "I will not be surprised if DagangNet becomes our seventh member by the time our Steering Committee next meets in April this year."

"But we also made significant progress in other areas. Our Certificate Authority Mutual Recognition Scheme got off to a flying start with TaiCA (used by TRADE-VAN) and Digi-Sign (used by TRADELINK) gaining recognition at this meeting. Application by other Certification Authorities are in the pipeline and we expect to process most of them by March."

Mr Yue also said that this would dovetail nicely with the piloting of the PAA's Secure Cross Border Transaction Services in April this year. Digital certificates from the mutually recognised Certification Authorities will be used to enhance security and achieve non-repudiation in these cross border transactions.

The PAA also reported significant progress in the following areas:

• 1. Secure Cross-border Transaction Services

  The Steering Committee endorsed the PAA document format standards for the initial set of documents to be used in the pilot to commence in April 2002. Work is also underway to expand the pilot to more commercial documents and to more industry segments.

• 2. Pan-Asian Portal

  CrimsonLogic presented a live demonstration of the Pan Asian Portal and highlighted in particular its traders directory feature and search capability. Links will be set up to connect the portal to the respective trader database of all Alliance members in the next two months. By this time, it will be capable of providing access to over 150,000 of the Alliance customers in the region.

• 3. TEDI

  TEDI updated significant progress in its development with actual transactions commencing in November 2001. In parallel, pilot tests are being conducted with TRADE-VAN and KTNET.

• 4. Cargo Tracking Service

  Progress was being made by the Cargo Tracking Working Group in testing the system involving some customers from KTNET and TRADE-VAN. Upon completion of the testing, the next step is to extend the use of the service to other alliance members and incorporating the cargo tracking functions into the Secure Cross-border transaction services.

• 5. Financial Fulfillment

  The meeting also agreed to set up a work group to examine the potential of creating PAA services to facilitate financial fulfillment.

The Steering Committee formally established two operating companies to manage the operation of the PAA Policy Authority and the PAA trade services which initially include the Secure Cross-border transaction services and the Pan-Asian Portal respectively.

The PAA Alliance was formed in mid 2000 and now comprises the following founding members:

• Infoshare, or Infoshare Information Technology Development Co. Ltd. of China
• KTNET or Korea Trade Network of Korea
• SNS or Singapore Network Services, now known as CrimsonLogic of Singapore
• TEDI Club, of Japan
• TRADELINK or TRADELINK Electronic Commerce Limited of Hong Kong
• TRADE-VAN or TRADE-VAN Information Services Corporation., of Chinese Taipei