Smart Bits: SET Milestone: First Interbank Transaction

MasterCard International said two banks in Taiwan have successfully tested the interbank interoperability of the Secure Electronic Transactions protocol.

In a transaction completed May 16, Roland Cheung, Citibank's country chief for credit cards, bought a compact disk recording from a MasterCard- accepting merchant served by China Trust Commercial Bank.

The transaction, said to be the first using SET between banks, flowed over an IBM-supported infrastructure, with digital certificates provided by GTE Corp.

Taiwan is a hotbed of on-line commerce development, with more than 50 cybermalls up and running, said Thomas Pouliot, MasterCard's vice president for electronic commerce.

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