Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

First banks go live with online B2B payment system

December 11, 2000 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - A group of four major banks based in Europe and the U.S. today said they're going live with a system that's designed for use in processing large electronic payments between different companies.

The technology, developed by New York-based consortium Identrus LLC, provides identity confirmation, security and a legal framework for large financial transactions. That's supposed to make it easier for banks to do business on the Internet and to help them give commercial customers ready access to online payment capabilities.

Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., and European financial institutions ABN AMRO Holding N.V., Deutsche Bank AG and HypoVereinsbank are the first to deploy business-to-business payment applications based on the system developed by Identrus, which was formed last year by a group of eight banks. Other members of the consortium include Barclays PLC, Chase Manhattan Corp. and Citigroup Inc.

An Identrus spokeswoman said business customers of the participating banks are eligible to receive an Identrus-approved digital certificate and a smart card. They would then use the smart card to log on to a Web-based system that lets them make electronic payments to other companies that also have Identrus certificates, she said.

Other companies make similar promises - for example, VeriSign Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., also offers authentication services for online payments. The Identrus spokeswoman said VeriSign's technology supports the Identrus system and is also being used by Bank of America.

But Identrus differs from vendors such as VeriSign because it's a vendor-neutral consortium of financial institutions and as such is the closest thing that the business world has to a global standard for securing large-scale electronic payments, said Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

"You need a bank-owned consortium to pull [the development of such a standard] off," Litan said. However, she added, a recent Gartner survey showed that moving to digital certificates for processing business-to-business payments isn't a high priority for most companies, with less than 1% of transactions involving the technology at this point.

"User IDs and passwords work fine today," Litan said. "I don't think digital certificates will be a total failure, but it's going to be an uphill battle [for Identrus and other proponents]."

Related stories:



For full coverage of information security issues, visit our Security Watch page.


Jump to comments

E-business

Additional Resources

Xerox
By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!
Microsoft
Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.
Sybase
In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Share our Strength
Download Now  

Managing Secure File Transfer to Save Time, Money and IT Resources
Learn how companies are using innovative technology to overcome these challenges and improve user productivity by offloading e-mail attachments and replacing FTP with...

Security Convergence Equals Network Security Cost Savings
Listen to IBM Internet Security Systems' take on network security convergence.

Disaster Recovery 2008: Reduced Costs and Improved Performance
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this...