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MasterCard, others, join Liberty Internet alliance

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CIOL Bureau
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SAN FRANCISCO: Credit card company MasterCard International has joined the

Liberty Alliance of companies cooperating on standards for making Internet

commerce easier and secure, Liberty said on Wednesday.

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Although rebuffed repeatedly by Microsoft Corp., which already has begun

rolling out its .NET systems for secure electronic commerce, Liberty has raised

its profile in recent weeks by adding members such as American Express Co. and

Internet provider America Online, the unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.. France

Telecom and Hewlett-Packard Co. have also joined the alliance, Liberty said on

Wednesday.

Eric Dean, president of the alliance's management board and chief information

officer at United Airlines, said Liberty could have a set of protocols ready in

a year and companies could be rolling out the first compliant systems six months

after that. Liberty aims to let consumers accessing the Internet from wireless

phones, computers and other devices sign on once and then securely surf and shop

on participating Web sites. United, for instance, keeps some information for

members of its frequent flyer program, and looks to Liberty's protocols to make

it easier to share data with rental car agencies and other partners, Dean said.

Critics and skeptics such as Microsoft question whether the companies with

extremely different approaches to technology can agree on a single set of

standards, which Dean said, would be one of the main challenges. Dean also said

that Liberty was trying to draw Microsoft into the alliance. Liberty is not

building a system but a blueprint for passing data, so that Microsoft

theoretically could keep its own system and join Liberty. "Several of the

companies in the alliance have been talking to Microsoft," Dean said.

The alliance already includes a number of companies that are rivals to

Microsoft, from computer maker Sun Microsystems, Inc. to wireless phone maker

Nokia Corp.

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