Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) Protocol

Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) based Protocol purely on the science of cryptography that speaks of encoding and decoding messages for communication. This science in not new to us rather it has been in use since the evolution of human. SET is a protocol developed jointly by VISA and MasterCard involving other computing majors like IBM. SET is an open standard for protecting the privacy and ensuring the authenticity of electronic transactions especially applicable to the banking sector where the transactions could be in terms of few cents to multi-million dollars.

SET protocol is based on two different encryption and one authentication mechanisms. SET uses symmetric encryption using the well known Data Encryption Standard (DES) and asymmetric or public key encryption to transmit keys for DES transactions. The DES algorithm has been used since the 1970s with advancements that took place later reduced the key size from the original 128 bits to 56 bits. The SET protocol also uses another popular encryption algorithm RSA known after the three scientists who developed it.

The customer can keep surfing through websites and get every information about the products or services of the company, but when it comes to the money transactions, SET comes into play. The customer who intends to place order for certain products on a company makes payment through credit card number that is authenticated by a third party usually called as authenticator or intermediately. The third party donot carryout any financial dealing but their responsibility is only to authenticate the transactions. They in-turn communicate with the banks or vendors and also enable debiting of the amount from the customers bank account and immediately crediting into the vendors account. Any failures to do so is also suitably handled during the process and it is ensured that the transaction takes place smoothly and without any fraud.