Tandem Computers Inc says credit card clearing companies Telekurs Payserv AG, Switzerland and SNS Systems Inc of Canada are the first customers for its internet-based SET Secure Electronic Transaction payment solutions. Tandem implements GlobeSet Inc SET payment applications and hardware from its own Atalla unit on its Windows NT servers. Tandem says the solutions include gateway, point of service or wallet, and certificate authority software. Atalla’s Paymaster ISP product offloads compute-intensive SET cryptography from the Tandem server and manages private keys using custom hardware. SET was developed by a consortium including Visa, Mastercard, IBM and Microsoft. The difference between SET and common SSL secure socket layer security is that SET is supposed to prevent merchant fraud – individuals or groups setting up fraudulent companies on the net with the purpose of collecting credit card numbers. What no-one could tell us by press time is when these SET systems will go into operation and how users will know they’re using a SET systems as opposed to SSL.
