W3C wants new standard to pay off

Tim Byars (tbyars@cris.com)
Mon, 15 Apr 1996 15:01:34 -0700


The World Wide Web Consortium and CommerceNet will announce an
initiative Wednesday to unify all Web payment solutions.

The Joint Electronic Payments Initiative is intended to set a standard
negotiating mechanism for linking payment solutions such as IBM's Internet
Keyed Payment Protocols or Visa's and MasterCard's Secure Electronic
Transactions (SET) protocol, which allow online merchants to conduct
credit card transactions over the Internet.

Despite the W3C's influence, however, a new payment standard might
have trouble gaining support this late in the game. Key industry players,
such as Microsoft and Netscape Communications, have already thrown
their weight behind the SET initiative, encouraging observers who believed
that a single secure payment standard was already emerging.

Representatives of CommerceNet and the W3C, both industry trade
organizations, could not be reached for comment.

--

There are no incurable ills | There are no believable Gods There are no unkillable thrills | There are no unreachable goals There are no unbeatable odds | There are no unsaveable souls . . Osbourne e-mail tbyars@cris.com

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