eCommerce is growing at a substantial rate. How far can it progress without a reliable method to check the trustworthiness of participants?

The availability of information, broad selection, comparative prices and convenience are fundamentals that contribute to attracting consumers to web-based purchases. Consumer goods represent transactions that are relatively modest compared to B-to-B transactions. Somewhere between higher cost consumer sales and the typically high dollar amounts businesses transact, the benefits of on-line purchasing diminishes because more is at risk.

So there are positive and negative aspects of trust that involve what we might call certification or authenticity, and a component of risk avoidance. To put it another way I may trust you in low risk situations but not in higher risks situations. All of us have built a hierarchy of risk tolerance in the process of becoming a socially adept adult.

The question is, how do we translate the complex decisions we make when confronted with someone physically - body language, tone of voice, posture, and context - into a set of rules that can be applied progressively as our perceived risk increases? When taken in the context of the total on-line population and the huge total dollar transacted figures, this is no longer a casual problem. Large stake holders - the top software, networking and Financial Institutions - would do well to address the problem.

There are examples of successful solutions currently in use. Howard Rheingold, in his book Smart Mobs, talks about eBay.com and other sites where a rotating panel of evaluators rates vendors, the quality of their service and honesty. Considering that eBay.com enjoys 60 millions transactions and revenues that exceed billions of dollars, the system appears to work well for them. Notably, the average value of a transaction is fairly modest.

Truste.com takes another approach and issues a certificate covering the security measures clients use but they skirt the trust issue.

What is needed is a system that speaks to the authenticity of the buyer and seller - that they are who they say they are, combined with services like Dunn and Bradstreet, Hooper Holms, the Better Business Bureau, Security ratings, plus a company's internal Customer Satisfaction report.

Of course, in the world of eCommerce the conclusions from each of these reporting mechanisms should be available in an easily and consistently rated set of numbers. Free is good, but a reasonable charge for the service is not out of the question for this kind of valuable service. Were a Microsoft, City Bank or D & B to tackle the issue, there is no telling how far and how fast eCommerce would progress.