Ireland's first indigenous system for processing credit card transactions over the Internet was launched yesterday by Bank of Ireland.

The bank is calling the system Clickpay and says it will provide businesses and customers with a secure payments system to complete purchases and transactions online.

"By leveraging the security and convenience of Clickpay, we are helping merchants realise the vast potential of the Internet for business transactions," said Mr Billy Saunderson, head of card services at Bank of Ireland.

The Clickpay service is based on a client-server technology and uses secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol with 128 encryption for transmitting credit card information directly between the customer and the bank's server.