Secure Electronic Transaction

This technology is more commonly known as the SET in the networking world as compared to the name Secure Electronic Transaction. Basically SET is an acronym for Secure Electronic Transaction; however, this acronym is more widely used in the networking world as compared to the full name. Secure Electronic Transaction or SET is the standard protocol that was introduced to secure the transactions made via credits cards over the non-secure networks like internet. The role of this protocol was to prevent any hijacker or unauthorized user from intercepting the transaction and taking all the money with him.

One thing should be remembered when dealing with this technology that, SET itself was not and is not the payment system or mode of payment via the credits card. It is just the technology that was introduced to secure the transactions that were being made through credit cards.

SET was widely used when it was newly released, today, however another security protocol named VISA had been introduced and it is more secure than the SET; therefore there had been a gradual decrease in the use of this security protocol. The reason for introducing this VISA protocol was that the SET protocol failed to provide adequate security for the transactions. So in the near future it is expected that the SET might become a legacy, however, for now it is still present in the market and being used by few organizations that are getting satisfactory results from this technology.

The SET was equipped with various features, which enabled it to provide the security for the transactions. These features are Confidentiality of the information, integrity of the data, cardholder account authentication and merchant authentication. These were the key features of this technology. With respect to the participant, the SET has various participants, named cardholder, merchant, issuer, acquirer, certification authority and payment gateway.