An Auckland company, Online Reservations (ORL) has become the first local reservation agent to offer Internet ticketing services, and the first show available for booking is the Great Moscow Ice Show.
By visiting the ORL site, at www.tickets. co.nz, customers can choose time, day and seating arrangements and purchase their tickets using a credit card.
ORL is a joint venture between systems integrator NetLogic and media company Base2. They have partnered with Xtra and the BNZ to provide Internet and banking services for this venture.
BNZ’s Buy-Line system is being used for the first time. It allows credit card transactions to be processed remotely 24 hours a day. The BNZ hopes this will make buying goods by credit card over the phone, by mail order or via the Internet quicker and more reliable.
Michael Walls, an ORL spokesman, says that until now, purchasing an item over the Net has meant waiting a day or more for confirmation of the credit card transaction, slowing down delivery times. Ordering tickets through ORL should happen in real time, with transaction confirmation occurring immediately.
Xtra provides security for these transactions in the form of a 40-bit secure sockets layer (SSL). Kent Duston, manager of business to business transactions for Xtra, says SSL transports card numbers between the purchaser’s browser and Xtra’s transaction gateway and then on to the BNZ.
Duston feels that although 40-bit encryption is no longer state of the art, it is more than sufficient in this instance because the transactions take place in real time and credit card details are not stored on a server.
He feels it is highly unlikely anyone would be able to break 40-bit encryption here in New Zealand in the 30 seconds or so that each transaction takes.