PC Week

SET 1.0 Will Feel Growing Pains

By Jim Kerstetter and Michael Moeller, PC Week, June 1, 1997

The release this week of the SET 1.0 specification will be only the first step in an arduous effort to spur wide use of SET by the end of the year. MasterCard International Inc. and Visa USA Inc., along with Secure Electronic Transaction developers such as IBM and RSA Data Security Inc., hope SET can be a catalyst to drive consumers and businesses to conduct transactions over the Internet. But software certified on SET 1.0 won’t hit the market until September at the earliest, sources

Also, U.S. banks, unlike their European and Asian counterparts, have been slow to embrace SET. Citicorp, NationsBank Corp., First Union National Bank and First USA Inc. are expected to start end-to-end SET pilot projects this summer, sources said.

“I think everyone is really, really concerned that we have production systems up and running for the Christmas season,” said William Archibald, chief technology officer at GlobeSet Inc., an Austin, Texas, software developer that already has released products based on prerelease versions of SET.

Users also hope SET will lend credibility to their Web commerce sites. “We’re looking forward to what we anticipate will be a good marketing push from the credit card companies,” said Lawrence Peryer, sales director of CD Universe Inc., in Wallingford, Conn.

Visa and MasterCard will begin testing for SET interoperability and compliance this summer, said Steve Herz, senior vice president of electronic commerce at Visa, in Foster City, CA.

On the desktop side, Netscape Communications Corp. is working with CyberCash Inc. to place a SET wallet into its Communicator client and browser by the time it ships next week. Microsoft Corp. will embed a SET-enabling wallet in Internet Explorer 4.0, which will be released this summer.

JavaSoft officials said developers should see SET wallet capabilities added to the Commerce APIs sometime this summer.

Developers are already working on SET 2.0, which is expected next year with extensions for international use, smart cards, debit cards with pin numbers and a shift to RSA independence.

Final 1.0 spec published

Interoperability certification testing begins; U.S. banks launch SET pilots

Products written with SET 1.0 hit market

First commercial SET transactions targeted for holiday season