Subject: Passage of Electronic Signature/Electronic Commerce Bill

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 11:28:29 EST

For Immediate Release               
Contact:            Kawika Daguio
                    301-332-5224

Financial Information Protection Association (FIPA) Applauds Passage of 
Federal Electronic Signature Bills.

Washington, DC  (November 20, 1999) - Financial Information Protection 
Association (FIPA - www.fipanet.org) congratulates the House and Senate for 
passing two critical pieces of legislation that when their differences are 
resolved will provide a much needed uniform federal legal infrastructure for 
electronic commerce that covers electronic signatures and electronic 
agreements.

Kawika M. Daguio, Executive Vice President of FIPA said, "The financial 
services industry, its commercial customers and consumers will all benefit 
from the increased flexibility and savings that will result from the 
innovative services that it will now be possible to deliver safely and with 
the requisite certainty that resulting electronic agreements can be enforced. 
  Until now, many kinds of commercial transactions could not done on the 
Internet because of concerns that the contracts might be unenforceable.

The Executive staff and many of the members of FIPA have been involved in 
efforts to pass electronic commerce and electronic signatures legislation for 
over four years, and have been involved in every strategic step forward taken 
over the last few years.   Mr. Daguio said, "We have had a number of 
incremental yet meaningful wins during the last four years, but this week's 
progress has been amazing."

Mr. Daguio added, "We have invested our time, money, and other resources into 
making electronic commerce safer and more efficient and we are very pleased 
that the Congress has responded to help meet the needs of the electronic 
commerce marketplace."

In a letter to FIPA's Congressional Liasons Mr. Daguio said, "We are looking 
forward to working with the House, Senate, and Clinton Administration to 
produce a conference agreement that will meet the needs of the consumer and 
corporate customers of financial services firms as well as others involved in 
electronic financial services and electronic commerce."

ABOUT FIPA
FIPA, (www.fipanet.org ) which offers individual professional and 
institutional memberships, is dedicated to helping individuals, firms, and 
governments work together to protect sensitive financial information while 
promoting commerce.  Members of FIPA have demonstrated their commitment and 
contributions to the protection of financial information and are uniquely 
qualified to make determinations of the reasonableness of information 
protection policies and measures in their firms.