ABSTRACT
The use of a personal identification number (PIN) associated with an integrated circuit card to authorize banking transactions reduced fraud dramatically; in France, for example, the rate dropped to 0.023% in 1996 and even to 0.018% in 1998. Clearly, banks have an interest in investigating the use of smart cards to secure payments on the Internet. This is the reason SETCo investigated ways to ensure the compatibility of SET with the new generation of chip cards based on the EMV (EuroPay, MasterCard, Visa) specifications. One document discusses the authorization and financial settlement of SET transactions (SETCo, 1999a). Another defines online identification of cardholders using PINs entered from the keyboard or via secure PIN-pad readers (SETCo, 1999b).
