Following on this proof of concept announced last year, NACHA is to move to pilot. The concept levers Banks' investment in mandated (US) two factor authentication, and requires ecommerce transactors to log into their online banking to validate payments.

This makes sense and is not dissimilar to the Canadian Interac Debit which is slowly moving out there. It remains to be seen though, whether it can be implemented in a way that's not inconvenient to the user, particularly compared to credit card purchases.

News

(April 13, 2005) An operational test of a system by which consumers could instruct their banks to pay online merchants and billers is set to take place in July, according to NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rule-setting association for the automated clearing house that is sponsoring the test.Participants so far include Radio Shack Corp., National City Corp., and software vendor eWise Systems. Three other financial institutions—Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Gardiner Savings Institution–have also signed up for the test and are expected to recruit an online merchant. The so-called proof-of-concept test, which will run throughout the month and will rely on the automated clearing house to settle payments, will include focus-group studies with online merchants and billers. Association staff hopes to have a recommendation before the NACHA board by November on whether to proceed with further work on the new payment method.

Here is the announcement to go to full pilot.

US electronic payments body Nacha is organising an online payments
pilot in which consumers transacting over the Web are authenticated by
their own financial institutions before authorising funds transfers
from their accounts.Nacha says the idea behind the scheme is to
leverage banks' mandated investments in authentication technology, as
stipulated by FFIEC guidelines.