1.7 Secure Electronic Transactions (SET).


SET requires specific software components to allow all of the participants to communicate in a secure and efficient manner. For example, a user cannot physically swipe their card at the merchants request, so a digital wallet is created that perform this comparative behavior. The specific software components are (Davies 2008):
the digital wallet the front-end for the card holder
the merchant server the merchants SET software
the certificate authority handles all of the SET participants certificates
the payment gateway bridges the merchant with its acquirers legacy systems

Different functions of SET are implemented by IBM products. Each role is taken by a different product, as follows (IBM 1997):
Cardholder: This function is provided by CommercePOINT Wallet, which is a plug-in module for Web browsers.
Merchant: This function is provided by the Net.Commerce server, together with an additional function which
implements the SET protocol as an extension to the standard payment processing options. The complete
application (Net.Commerce plus SET extensions) will be known as CommercePOINT Till.

1.7 Secure Electronic Transactions (SET).


SET Certifying Authority: This function is provided by the IBM Registry for SET. IBM Registry is a general-purpose
certificate management server. The SET edition adds SET protocol support to the base server.
Acquirer Payment Gateway: This function is provided by CommercePOINT Gateway, which implements the
acquirer gateway portion of the SET protocol and provides a number of tools and interfaces to interface it to
existing authorization systems.