What item was sold in the first secure online transaction in 1994?

The item sold in the first secure online transaction in 1994 was Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales CD. On August 11, 1994, NetMarket processed a credit-card purchase for the album, often cited as the first secure online sale of a physical product.

The transaction used SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, to encrypt payment information as it moved between the customer and the online merchant. That security layer helped address one of the biggest obstacles to electronic commerce: convincing shoppers that entering card details on a networked computer could be safer than sending them openly across the Internet.

The sale was arranged by Dan Kohn, a young entrepreneur associated with NetMarket, and the CD reportedly cost $12.48 plus shipping. Ten Summoner’s Tales was Sting’s fourth studio album and had been released in 1993. The disc was later delivered by mail, so the purchase was online even though fulfillment remained physical.

This fact is sometimes confused with the first online purchase of any kind, the first downloadable product, or the first commercial Web transaction. The quiz’s wording points specifically to the famous secure physical-goods transaction.