I remember reading an article in a newsmagazine in the mid-1990s about online payments. The gist of the text, effectively, was that the lack of an online payments system that was both easy to use and reasonably secure was considered the biggest impediment to using the e-commerce potential of the internet to the fullest. All sorts of concepts were explored (some of them actually very similar to today’s concepts, such as PayPal-like account-based services, or schemes where you buy a prepaid stored-value card physically to use its number for online purchases). Many places, however, were more than comfortable to send credit card details unencrypted, simply hoping for the best or not caring about the security problems at all.
The Sandra Bullock film The Net appeared in 1995. I believe she ordered pizza via the Internet in the movie, but I remember thinking at the time that still seemed a little futuristic. At least here in Thailand.
EDIT: Ah, I see I was beaten to the punch. But I put a year to it!
Since we also were happily handing our plastic to waiters for them to process in some back room and cheerfully allowing store assistants, who made no attempt whatsoever to match the signature, to keep copies of our payment slips, sending the details over some geeky interwebby thing, hardly seemed a risk at all.
I’m sure it was possible to place online orders for pizzas (though probably not hot ones) long before 1994. Back in the 1980s there were dial-up networks such as Prodigy which offered online grocery shopping. The interface was text-based and horribly slow on the 300- and 1200-baud modems of the time, and probably didn’t process payments online, though thanks to deals with nationwide supermarket chains the service was geographically wide-ranging (at least in the US).
I just found a rather negative review of Prodigy’s grocery service which was printed in The Chicago Tribune in 1990:
I don’t recall the exact year, but it was probably pre-2000, but I still remember the hassle of my first online purchase. I was ordering some piece of musical equipment from, I think, musiciansfriend.com. While the web site had the full order form process, with the shopping cart and the steps to enter your name, address, and card info, the overall security aspects that we take for granted now weren’t in place yet (and probably not just on that particular site, but everywhere in general). I was able to place my order easily, but before they could process it I had to fax them a copy of my photo ID and my card to verify that it really was me trying to use my card, and that I was actually in physical possession of the card. I guess this was before the card companies started adding the 3-4-digit security codes to the backs of the cards.
Papa johns claims first in 2001.
Not only did the movie The Net come out in 1995, but Bullock was cast just before October 24, 1994:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4253931.html
Bullock was offered the role on the basis of her performance in Speed, so the offer was after June 10, 1994. A movie that was being cast between June 10 and October 24 of 1995 was written no later than early 1994.
It depends on what you mean by ‘first’. They certainly weren’t the absolute first just possibly the one that implemented an ordering system that would be recognizable and usable even today.
I was on the web in early 1994 using Netscape 0.8 beta as a browser and it wasn’t even the first. There wasn’t much content on the web in early 1994 and there weren’t even any true search engines. There was a printed directory of all web sites that many college bookstores sold and it wasn’t even that thick. However, things started growing exponentially in late 1994 and really picked up in 1995 - 1996.
You could find primitive examples of most of the things you can do on the web today including things like streaming radio and online ordering, it was just hard to use and experimental. People experimented with all kinds of stuff even in the early days. I remember being amazed that someone hooked a vending machine up to the web in 1995 at some college so that you could pay for something and have it waiting in the slot when you walked down the hall. The user base for such a thing must have been in the low single digits but it was clever.
I must have been one of the first people to book travel straight from the web in late 1995. There was no Expedia, Travelocity or anything of that nature but some travel company in Pennsylvania gave online access to their reservation system for registered web users and let people book tickets that way. I put together one hell of an itinerary to visit home from graduate school during the 1995 holiday break. It didn’t work all that well of course. The travel agency started calling me and the agents were confused about how I was trying to book my trip because the web interface was brand new and they didn’t have much experience with it. I eventually got the tickets but it wasn’t nearly as streamlined as it is today. Still, it showed an early example of the potential people were seeing even then before the boom barely even got started.
I am 100% sure about the dates and my experiences during that time. I was in undergraduate and graduate school during that time and I had access to the web through the labs I worked in so the dates are crystal clear. I was so fascinated with watching the internet grow that I figured out that I liked IT work better than the lab work that I was supposed to be focusing on so I quit grad school and joined the IT field right when the internet boom really got going. It was a good move.
You can argue about ‘firsts’ all day long but I can promise you that there are now defunct earlier contenders for virtually any web activity you can name. Most of those have good examples as early as 1993 - 1994 and most have examples by 1996 - 1997. Only a few major activities have a first, early example as late as 2000. The later examples tend to be something like Google Earth that require lots of supporting data and infrastructure rather than just something a programmer or three can try to build on their own ion the basement.
REALLY?! Oh my god, that’s amazing!!!
I mean, seriously? $28 doesn’t get me three grocery bags worth of food at Aldi these days! Have food prices gone up that much and I didn’t notice?
Credit card, of course :). The bad guys hadn’t discovered the internet yet.
I just remembered the job I had in 94, the place had a website but I can’t remember much about it. I was doing a lot of drugs back then. Lol
For someone so concerned with the veracity of historical claims, you sure didn’t bother to do any research.
And yet, millions who protect their online personas like all the demons of hell are after their financial information think nothing of handing their credit card to a waitress in some no name diner. Next week her boyfriend’s driving a new bass boat. My credit card information has been compromised several times, and every time it’s been by someone who I handed the physical card to.
Maybe you should start shopping and eating at different places? 
The hell of it is, it was always my corporate card. I’d get an email that this gas station in Louisiana had a clerk who’d been skimming card numbers, or a restaurant in Florida, or Alabama or some place out in Bug Tussle, and my card had been cancelled and a new one was on the way. I never got gigged for any charges, and it was more of a nuisance than an expense, having to plug new card numbers into all my travel profiles.
Heck, if we don’t stick to the Web, pre-1994 people on AOL and CompuServe (and the already mentioned Prodigy) already had quite a few e-commerce options within the services, including for instance airline ticket purchases via EAAsySabre (they would then FedEx you the actual tickets) for CS customers. Sometimes the public forgets those services existed and large segments of the public used them before the Web exploded.
People still eat at Pizza Hut?
But, really, that’s the only question that commercial brings to my mind. And, what the hell is wrong with Pizza Hut that they’ve fallen so far behind the curve?
Didn’t think I had to since I experienced it myself. So now I’m off to research early onset dementia.
I’d be more worried about getting my wallet back after dropping it in the middle of the street and then walking around the block than if I handed my wallet to a random stranger on the street and asked them to hold it while I walked around the block.