BANK of Ireland has predicted a bright future for its new Internet shopping centre, claiming that the service had notched up its first 400 customers since Tuesday's inauguration. The pilot project, named ShopIreland, allows customers to purchase goods using their computers and a credit card.

A spokeswoman for the bank said it expected a rapid take up of shopping on the Internet by Irish people. She pointed out that Irish consumers had traditionally proved faster to overcome inhibitions to technology than people elsewhere.

"When ATMs were first introduced here, a leading computer consultancy firm estimated that 40 machines would be needed for the whole of Ireland. There are now over 1,000," Ms Eilis O'Brien, of Bank of Ireland group's public affairs department, said.

Use of the new "Laser" debit card in the Republic was already at more than double the rate in Britain at the same stage, she continued, and the company's telephone banking service, introduced in May, was now fielding more than 3,000 calls a day.

The bank's Internet programme manager, Mr Alan Shanley, said he was delighted that there had already been some 400 registered customers on the ShopIreland World Wide Web site. So far, about 85 per cent of the customers had been Irish, he added, but he expected this to change.

"You have to remember that this is before the site has been registered with the search engines, which will increase hits. Ultimately, we expect the bulk of sales to be from the United States," Mr Shanley said.

The ShopIreland project is currently restricted to three retailers, Clerys, Guinness and House of Ireland, and three other businesses, Budget Travel, TicketShop and Compustore, which may soon begin trading. Computer users with the right modem and software can log on to the site on the World Wide Web, and pick and pay for their purchases using a credit card.

Bank of Ireland says it is convinced that each transaction will be secure for customers because of an encryption system.

"The Trintech PayWare solution provides Bank of Ireland with an open, platform independent payment application, using SSL (secure socket layers) to provide a secure channel between Microsoft Merchant Server and Bank of Ireland over which existing authorisation and settlement protocols can be employed," the bank said.