ANSI to work on e-payment -- first meeting coming up

First Meeting of Electronic Commerce Work Group
November 29, Washington, DC

ANSI Accredited Standards Committee X9 - Financial Services - in 
response to the explosion of payment transaction proposals for the 
internet, has approved a new work item to develop a single secure 
electronic payment syntax.  The first meeting of the Electronic Commerce 
Work Group will be Wednesday, November 29 from 9:00am till 5:00pm at the 
American Bankers Association, 1120 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 
20036.

Agenda

Review of Scope of Work
Consideration of Federal Reserve Request to expand scope to Bank-Bank 
messages
Presentation from Industry groups with existing payment protocols
Assignment of work items
New items
Next meetings  (Jan/Feb. - San Francisco, May - Boston??)

A draft scope:

The payment syntax described in this standard is designed to order a 
financial institution to make payment to a merchant from an account of a 
purchaser based on the near term delivery of low monetary value goods or 
services.  It will be possible to include this payment order in any 
electronic protocol that is based on communications between the 
purchaser and the merchant, and between the merchant and a financial 
institution.  This standard does not describe, nor recommend, any 
particular communications protocol.

When used within a complete payment infrastructure, the secure payment 
order described shall offer privacy and integrity of the purchaser's 
payment information, and shall prevent the purchaser from successfully 
repudiating the sending, or the merchant from successfully repudiating 
the receiving, of a valid payment order.  Thus the financial institution 
can be sure that its customer requested the payment and that the 
merchant can be accurately identified on the account statement.

About ASC X9

ASC X9 is the accredited standards developer which brings together 
banks, securities trading companies, equipment and software 
manufactures, associations and others in the financial services industry 
to develop voluntary nationally accepted standards based on industry 
consensus.  Founded in 1976, ASC X9 was accredited by the American 
National Standards institute in 1984.  The American Bankers Association 
serves as X9 Secretariat.  For more information on X9, contact the 
secretariat at 202/663-5300, for more information on the Electronic 
Commerce Work Group, contact its chair, Tom Jones at 602/554-3569.

Anyone know what kind of encryption they will be using...


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HP builds security for smartcard shopping
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Hewlett-Packard is bidding for US government approval for a
worldwide cryptographic framework, which is being to provide a
security for a joint smartcard project with Gemplus and
Informix.

The three companies plan to develop a secure personal
information card system, with which businesses can deliver
services including Internet-based transactions to consumers.
The encrypted cards will carry several thousand times the
amount of data on current smartcards and will (pending US
export approvals) be usable anywhere in the world.

HP is providing server, encryption, middleware and networking
technologies. Gemplus will provide advanced smart-card tech-
nology. Database and middleware technologies will come from
Informix. The alliance was launched at Telecom 95.

HP's proposed non-user-accessible cryptography is the first
element in an international open cryptography framework, with
which it hopes to deliver security technology compliant with
US export regulations.