NEC Corp’s relationship with Hewlett-Packard Co is expanding by leaps and bounds these days and after recently extending its computer resale agreement with HP the Japanese company is now teaming with HP’s VeriFone electronic payments subsidiary to develop and market internet-based payment products for its home market. VeriFone says it will extend its Secure Electronic Transaction products for the Japanese market by adding support for the SET’s Japanese payment option. It says the Visa card unit of Sumitomo Bank Ltd’s Sumitomo Credit Services, which has 1.7 million customers, will be the first to deploy the extended VeriFone products. VeriFone is to integrated its vPOS merchant product with Microsoft Site Server as part of the deal. Insiders says NEC Japan’s PC, systems and product divisions are migrating quickly to a systems integration business model under which they will sell whatever products customers require. NEC has recently abandoned its proprietary personal computer products in Japan (CI No 3,255), and signed a wide-ranging agreement with Microsoft on Windows NT, which is particularly strong in Japanese markets. NEC says its Mips RISC-based computer systems strategy is not as visible as its more recent resale agreements simply because it is more mature. It says it’s even exceeded its Mips shipment forecasts in some markets.
