Internet Keyed Payment Protocols (iKP)

The Security Groups of IBM Research in Hawthorne and Zurich have jointly proposed an architecture and protocols for electronic payments over open networks.

iKP - A Family of Secure Payment Protocols - implement credit card-based transactions between the customer and the merchant, while using the existing financial network for approval and clearing. The protocols can be readily extended to apply to other payment models, such as debit cards and electronic checks.

Overview (HTML) on the iKP architecture.
Publication List on iKP.
Protocol specifications (March, 1996); (text-version)

The iKP protocols constitute an open proposal, and have being designed with the intention of serving as a starting point for eventual standards on secure electronic payment.

SET: Mastercard and VISA have cooperatively developed the Secure Electronic Transactions. SET combines ideas from the previous proposals by MasterCard (SEPP, which is based on iKP) and VISA (STT), and was designed by GTE, IBM, MasterCard, Microsoft, Netscape, SAIC, Terisa Systems, Verisign, Visa.

Secure Electronic Transactions (SET)

SET is as an open, vendor-neutral, non-proprietary, license-free specification for securing on-line transactions. The draft (96-05-31) is available for review and comment by all interested parties.

SET is discussed on the mailing list set-discuss@commerce.net. To subscribe, send a message to

          majordomo@commerce.net

with the body of the message

          subscribe set-discuss

Last modified : Saturday, 28 October 2000 14:47 CEST