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.
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