Denmark and France Pioneer E-Commerce. IBM SET
Ray Van Eng (02/24/97)
To accomplish the feast, PBS relied on the IBM Registry for SET and Net.Commerce Payment Software to handle Eurocard-MasterCard credit card purchases with three merchants and a few hundred PBS customers in Denmark. Although the SET standard has yet to been finalized, PBS claimed that the existing version is safe enough for pilot tests to begin. Other vendors have used a combination of SET and Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to achieve similar goals, PBS indicated that theirs was entirely SET protocol driven. PBS will expand its services throughout 1997.
Now, Europay France is piloting a fully secure payment scheme over the Internet using the Eurocard- MasterCard chip cards. Banks will start issuing PC smart card readers to consumers to aid in the service roll out expected in April. Officials say that the system will use the security standard as defined by GIE Cartes Bancaires, the Chip-Secure Electronic Transaction (C-SET). Meanwhile, France Telecom is offering a new cellular phone service that does not require subscription and is charged on a per use basis. Customers can purchase GSM smart cards that would allow them to use a mobile phone for 30 minutes within a four month period. Everytime they use their cellular service, money will be deducted from the smart card. Once the credit is used up, they can reload the card. As long as they refill the card at least once every four months, they do not need to pay the subscription fee. The system is designed to attract the occasional cellular users. |
© Copyright Ray Van Eng 1997 - 1999. All Rights Reserved.
Instead
of claiming to be the first to make possible SET compliant transactions,
the French pointed to the fact that their Minitel subscribers have enjoyed
secure payment services over a public network for many years. Indeed, the
French are one of the most ardent users of smart cards in the world with
about 25 million cards in circulation in that country today.