Joint Electronic Payment Initiative (JEPI)
Ray Van Eng (05/06/96)
In an effort to avoid a myriad of incompatible standards, the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) and CommerceNet have proposed a Internet payment protocol
known as the Joint Electronic Payments Initiative (JEPI).
Although Visa and MasterCard and their Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) standard have garnered wide industry support, credit card transactions represents only one way to pay for purchases over the Internet. Other payment schemes include digital cash, electronic wallets or debit cards.
Furthermore, vendors may like to reward shoppers with electronic coupons, frequent flier miles for purchases which would complicate the transaction process. The JEPI standard is aimed at providing a single unified protocol for everyone including web server, browser and payment vendors to incorporate into their own products to ensure interoperability between different systems.
Many leading Internet electronic commerce vendors including Microsoft, Netscape, IBM, OpenMarket, Verifone etc. are committed to support the JEPI. W3C and CommerceNet hopes to have a working system in place by Christmas this year.
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