MASTERCARD hopes to capture a share of the growing electronic commerce conducted over the Internet by providing its card holders with secure electronic transactions by next April.
By the year 2000, the volume of such electronic commerce could be anywhere between US$10 billion and $90 billion a year, MasterCard vice-president Paul Confrey said.
In a recent survey conducted on the Internet, MasterCard found 25 per cent of the participating consumers would use a credit card for shopping on the Internet, but the company expected the number would double following the introduction of global security standards.
The Secure Electronic Payment Protocol MasterCard released in early October, in collaboration with IBM, Netscape, GTE and CyberCash, was now under review by universities, software companies and regulatory agencies and would be ready for testing by the end of the year, Mr Confrey said yesterday.
It was already possible to shop on the Internet, but the problem was security, Mr Confrey said, adding most 'cybermalls' rely on a primitive encryption system for security or, worse, nothing at all.
Security must go beyond encryption to provide authentication of buyer to seller and vice-versa, Mr Confrey said.
