Netscape Communication Corp yesterday unveiled its plans to market on-line payment software for merchants and consumers later this year. The company has stripped the security and transaction software it already uses in its Commercial Applications line for use in a LivePayment component for its SuiteSpot Web server software. The company says it has the support of CyberCash Inc, First Data Corp, GE Capital, MasterCard, Verifone and Wells Fargo Bank for LivePayment, which it calls an Internet cash register allowing companies to accept credit card payments from customers over the Web. It’ll ship in the fall. It includes templates to build payment-ready applications and can receive payments from Secure Sockets Layer-enabled clients. Netscape says it’ll support the emerging Secure Electronics Transactions protocol in LivePayment. The consumer portion, due by year-end, will include a so-called wallet technology bundled into the Navigator browser that will allow consumers to use their credit cards to buy products over the net. Credit card and other electronic payment details would be stored on a user’s hard disk and accessed every time Navigator is used to buy products and services on-line. Netscape is short on detail but The Wall Street Journal believes the client software used will be an improved version of the wallet software CyberCash and others already ship using additional technology being created by Netscape and Sun Microsystems Inc based around a payments standard all three are working on. Very few companies accept payment with Cybercash software, partly, the paper observers, because merchants are still waiting for a standard to emerge that will allow them to collect and forward encrypted credit card information to banks and get immediate information sent back on whether the user has credit. It says Internet merchants that currently accept credit-card payments simply ask for the credit-card numbers and phone it into the bank later. Given the seeming inability for banking, technology and Internet merchant industries to agree on a standard it’s clear that consumer confidence in the security of on-line payment will also have to be raised.
