Ray Van Eng (06/17/97)                      

As expected, once the SET protocol was released on June 1, we would see a whole bunch of SET compliant tests being planned or carried out around the world.

The Wal-Mart Online store is the first one out the gate to conduct a live SET Internet transaction in the United States with the assistance of Globeset, GTE, and American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Globeset provides point-of-sale (POS) server management and wallet software incorporating GTE's certification authority technology which enables Amex credit card Internet transactions to go over the American Express Gateway for secure authorization and payment.

What was being bought? A drill press from Wal-Mart's hardware section.

As to why Wal-Mart is so eager in promoting the SET standard, Harry Fenik, vice president at Zona Research observed: "That SET is international is a big, big deal. Foreigners love to come to America and shop in U.S. stores."

Although much of the SET hype originated from the United States, a great deal of the SET action was actually taking place in Europe.

Over in Denmark last December, just before the new year, Mastercard officiated the world's first ever SET trial when Carl Christian Aegidius, IBM's director for Nordic countries, used his Mastercard to purchase a Stephen King novel from a Danish online shop. That pilot was a small one, it involved less than a handful of merchants servicing 1,000 card members.

Just last week, Visa International kicked off the largest SET trial ever when the head of the Internet division at the Bank of Ireland bought three personal items online from the bank's own Internet mall using a Visa card, a Microsoft electronic wallet and a Verisign Inc. issued digital certificate to authorize the transaction.

Visa's sixteen country European trial will last until the end of September and there will be 80 banks participating. Visa hopes to be able to entice thousands of merchant and 40,000 card holders to transact together over the Internet using SET as the underlying technology.

If all goes well, commercial roll out could start in January 1998 throughout Europe, Visa indicated.

Other SET pilots in the works include:

• Project E-comm in which the French will be using with their smart cards.
• Smart Commerce Japan, where the Japanese will conduct test with stored value cards.
• E2S in which the European will try out business to business applications Online shopping in Singapore, Korea and Taiwan.

For the Taiwanese, in preparation for a SET pilot later this year, Chunghwa Telecom's Internet division, HiNet is publishing an online Yellow Pages listing service for locals to find business names and addresses online. Initially, the service is in Chinese but other languages including English would be incorporated.

The system is part of the Taiwan National Information Infrastructure project that would eventually allow citizens to pay taxes, fill out government forms online and of course, carry out electronic shopping activities.

In Canada, a pilot program is being launched in the prairie province of Saskatchewan by SaskTel Corp., MasterCard International and Credit Union Electronic Transaction Services. An Internet shopping mall which will go online by the middle of July will use handle SET enabled purchases.