Over the years, several other payment card brands appeared, including Carte Blanche, Discover Card, and Optima Cards (American Express'' revolving credit card products). International cards have also appeared in the US, including ones from the Japan Commerce Bank (JCB).

By 1992, US consumer credit, based primary from credit cards, stood at 15% of the 1992 Gross National Product (GNP), or $799 billion. Today, credit cards are as pervasive as cash registers. VISA International claims that 600 million cards carry the VISA Brand label or one of their acceptance marks (VISA InterLink or VISA Electron). They further claim that 14 million locations accept their brand, which lead consumers to purchase more than one trillion dollars in goods and services in the 12 months ended March 1997.

The Internet further expands card acceptance and usage opportunities in ways deemed not possible in the off-line world.

Other payment products have also appeared to support the needs of corporations for business uses. The American Express Corporate and Government Cards are examples of these. Still other special-use cards, such as Purchasing Cards, add efficiencies and lower the costs related to business-to-business purchasing (discussed further in Chapter 20).

Because of their flexibility and lures of convenience, new payment card products are certain to appear, filling all niche needs as they arise.

At its onset, SET Version 1.0 is explicitly geared to support these brands of cards:

• VISA
• MasterCard
• American Express
• Diner''s Club
• JCB
• Novus (Discover Card)

Because SET emulates the work in payment card processing over the Internet, it''s instructive to first understand how Point Of Sale (POS) processing occurs in the non-Internet world.