Merchant Certificate Issuance Conditions

Before any Brand-specific Merchant Certificates can be issued, certain conditions must be met:

• The Merchant must have already established a relationship with an Acquirer and been assigned a unique Merchant ID.
• Merchant software must be able to generate public-private key-pairs and be able to store them safely.
• The Merchant must have already agreed to Acquirer policies for certificate uses and payment acceptance.
• The Merchant must possess the URL to the Merchant Certificate Authority for the Acquirer.
• Merchant servers must be operating SET-compliant software that can generate certificate processing requests.

Because your Merchant Server takes over the work that your POS terminal would otherwise perform, a special component is added to the cash register functions built into your commerce server software.

SET-compliant POS Software for Merchant Servers

Suites of new SET-compliant systems have begun to appear on the scene since late 1997. More often than not, these solutions show up as suites of products that provide end-to-end processing. They include Cardholder E-wallets, Merchant POS software, Certification Authority (CA) Systems, and Payment Gateway application software for Acquirers. Interoperability between these programs is guaranteed, since they''re developed with one common understanding of the SET Specification. The trick is to ensure that systems from different providers work together as though they were developed by the same people with the same interpretation and understanding of the SET Specification. Unfortunately, this isn''t always the case. When SET becomes the rousing success that many believe it will, interoperability between all related components will be a foregone conclusion. In time and with sufficient field and pilot testing, these problems should disappear.