BT Ignite, BT's broadband solutions business, and Arcot Systems, a provider of e-security technology, have developed an outsourced, 3-D secure payment authentication solution for European Visa financial institutions and card processors.
Under Visa's authenticated payment programme, which is based on the 3-D Secure Interoperability Protocol, card issuers will bear the liability for online card fraud, due to come into effect in April 2002 in the European Union.
Using the BT-Arcot service, which is available from BT Ignite on an applicaiton service provider basis, financial institutions will be able to reduce the initial cost and time taken to implement an authentication service, say the companies.
The service is based on Arcot's TransFort real-time authentication solution, designed to enable Visa member banks and card issuers to validate the cardholder's identity during an online transaction.
Jon Prideaux, executive vice president, Visa International, says: "This is exactly the sort of initiative that will make secure Internet payments a reality."
The service will be hosted in BT Ignite's secure hosting facility in Cardiff.