Will Barclaycard have the muscle to make online payments work?

Barclaycard today announced a key contract to help it build a web-based payment system.

The company has signed a deal with secure payment experts Trintech to use the company's PayWare software to build an e-payments system.

The system will allow users to pay for goods and services over the web without the time-consuming process of typing in their credit card details each time they wish to make a purchase.

The company also hopes to target the mobile and interactive TV markets with its solution.

However, the online payments market is littered with the corpses of failed ventures. Flooz.com filed for chapter 11 yesterday and the high-profile web currency beenz.com was phased out at the end of last week.

Barclaycard will also find itself going head-to-head with Microsoft, which is planning to move into the online payments space with its Passport authentication system.

Passport has a range of advantages. All the millions of users of the Hotmail web-based mail service are already signed up with Passport, and the system will integrate seamlessly with the new version of the company's desktop operating system, Windows XP.

The co-existence of Visa, Mastercard and other payment systems in the offline world suggests that there is room for more than one winner in this battle.

But Barclaycard will have to work hard to persuade existing customers to trust it in the daunting world of ecommerce if it is to have a chance of surviving alongside the Microsoft system.