Card Frontiers: Entrust Cites Its SET Certificates' Compatibility

Entrust Technologies Inc., the certificate authority and public key infrastructure vendor controlled by Northern Telecom of Canada, said its SET certificates for on-line credit card transactions are compatible with the products of two other vendors.

Contributing to the interoperability movement spreading through the data security community, Entrust said it successfully completed cross-testing with merchant, virtual wallet, and payment gateway software from GlobeSet Inc. of Austin, Tex., and Trintech Inc. of Ireland and San Jose, Calif.

The testing involved certificates that conform to the Secure Electronic Transactions 1.0 standard. The vendors have been consistently committed to interoperability but it requires considerable effort to take into account all variations in the respective software products.

"Interoperability of SET certificates with payment applications is critical to accelerating the worldwide deployment of Internet payment services," said John Ryan, president and chief executive officer of Entrust Technologies, based in Richardson, Tex.

"This cooperation highlights how real-world public key infrastructures are enabling secure business-to-business and business-to-consumer electronic commerce," he said.

Entrust said its SET certificate capability will be part of the CommerceCA product, a single framework for all corporate cryptographic functions, scheduled to be available in the second quarter.