telephone network pstn wireless networks corporate or university intranets and the like additionally merchant server 130 is coupled to a modem 150 which is in communication with a third party processor tpp 160 which may be but is not necessarily included in the financial authorization entity secure processor 170 tpp 160 is further coupled to a virtual point of sale pos gateway processor 190 which is in the financial authorization entity secure processor 170 also in the secure processor 170 and coupled to pos gateway processor 190 is payment authorization gateway 180 further wallet server 140 is coupled to merchant server 130 and to virtual point of sale vpos gateway processor 190 while an exemplary embodiment has been illustrated in fig1 it will be appreciated that other embodiments are possible thus as also described above components e g user 110 merchant 120 and wallet server 140 may be individual computers or network groups of computers acting with similar purpose to fulfill the functions described herein functionality attributed to a single component may be distributed among one or more individual computers in order to fulfill the described functionality for example the wallet server 140 may in fact be a collection of web servers application servers data base servers and other types of servers also in various embodiments data bases not shown and or profile servers not shown may be connected to wallet server 140 for further information related to smart cards browser functions digital wallets and e commerce transactions see u s patent applications u201c transaction card u201d u s ser no 9 653 837 filed on sep 1 2000 u201c method and apparatus for conducting electronic transactions u201d u s ser no 09 652 899 filed on aug 31 2000 u201c system and.