Card Briefs: Calif.'s Trintech Unveils Certificate-Free System

In a strong bid to improve the efficiency of on- line payment security, Trintech Group has introduced what it calls "Certless SET."

The system bypasses the need for a digital certificate, which would be issued by a bank or other trusted third party for storage in a consumer's virtual wallet.

Trintech and other software companies have been trying to make wallets "thinner" in terms of data content and therefore easier to handle than those originally designed to the MasterCard-Visa Secure Electronic Transaction specifications.

Certless SET is a new level of "thinness." It generates a SET message that is sent to a merchant, including an encrypted personal identifier that the merchant cannot decode but that confirms the merchant's legitimacy.

Certless SET is one of four types of security in a new Payware NetPOS product suite. The others are SSL, the Secure Sockets Layer protocol currently more widespread than SET; an SSL/SET hybrid; and End-to-End SET, with consumer certificates, for the highest-security needs.

John McGuire, co-founder and chief executive of Trintech, said its aim is a "practical migration path," combining in PayWare NetPOS "the convenience of SSL and the security of SET."