Beyond the announcement this week of a Java mortgage loan calculator applet for Belgium's Cera Bank, IBM [NYSE:IBM] is now working with major banks in North America, Europe, and Africa to produce World Wide Web-based "home banking environments,".

IBM also plans to help create online banking environments of this kind in Asia, and possibly in Latin America, said Mark Roberts, IBM's manager of Network Computing (NC) Technical Computing Products, and Nimish Radia, Ph.D., systems software architect.

The new banking environments will provide "teller-less" banking services either of, or above the sort now offered through ATMs (automated teller machines), but accessible directly from the home, or anywhere else a PC, network computer (NC), or other computer can be found, Radia maintained.

Cera Bank, one of the largest banks in Europe, is already offering Web-based banking, through a service known as Cera Online, according to the two IBM execs.

Roberts said that the new mortgage calculator applet produced for the Cera Bank will also be available for licensing to other IBM customers, but without the specific mathematical calculations used by Cera.

The applet, which complies with the 100 Percent Pure Java Initiative, will be run by the Cera Bank from IBM's OS/2 Warp server, he added.

End users equipped with a Java-enabled browser will be able to download the applet from virtually anywhere in the world, entering different loan variables such as loan amount, time to borrow, and type of payment, to figure out principal, interests, and various payments. Users will be able to display these applets as either tables or graphs.

"Then, if they find that Cera offers more competitive rates, for instance, they can immediately click on `apply' and get information on applying for a loan," asserted Roberts.

Radia noted that the new mortgage applet supports four different languages: English, Flemish, French, and German.

"Our goal was to serve as a catalyst for Java development, using the OS/2 platform as a catalyst," Roberts remarked. Associated with this overriding goal were several other objectives, he added.

"One objective was to produce an application in less than one `Web year,' or under 90 days. A second objective was to demonstrate that Java can be used for `mission critical' applications".

The IBM exec added that, introduction of the new Java applet coincides with the February/March time-frame, when banks in Belgium traditionally promote mortgage banking services.

The new applet will be available starting February 24 from Cera Banks' homepage on the Web at http://www.cera.be .

Radia says that IBM also plans to work with companies in industries that include retail, transportation, insurance, and food service, to develop large-scale Java-based customer service applications for the Web.

More information about IBM's software products can be obtained on at http://www.software.ibm.com on the Web.