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.
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.