SEPP ARCHITECTURE IN E-COMMERCE

SECURE ELECTRONIC PAYMENT PROTOCOL

SEPP is an open, vendor-neutral, license free specification that secures on-line transactions.

It provides a standard for presenting credit card transactions on the Internet.

 Some of the companies that have developed SEPP are IBM, Netscape, CyberCash and MasterCard.

SEPP helps in fulfilling some of the business requirements, which are stated as follows:
 •It enables confidentially of payment information.

• It ensures integrity of all the payment data that is transmitted.

• It provides the authentication that the card holder is the legitimated owner of the card account.

• It provides the authentication that the merchant can receive MasterCard branded card payments along with an acquiring member financial institution.

SEPP process

·        SEPP assumes that the cardholder and merchant have been communicating in order to negotiate terms of a purchase and generate an order.

·        These processes may be conducted via a WWW browser;

·        These operations may be performed through the use of email via the user’s review of a paper or CD-ROM catalogue or other mechanisms.

·        SEPP is designed to support transaction activity exchanged in both interactive (on-line) and non interactive (off-line) modes.

The SEPP system is composed of a collection of elements involved in electronic commerce:

· Card holder: This is an authorized holder of a bankcard supported by an issuer and registered to perform electronic commerce

· Merchant: This is merchant of goods, services, and/or e-products who accepts payment for them electronically and may provide selling services and/or electronic delivery of items for sale(e.g. e-products)

· Acquirer: This is a (MasterCard member) financial institution that supports merchants by providing service for processing credit-card based transactions.

 · Certificate management system: This is an agent of one or more bankcard association that provides for the creation and distribution of electronic certificates for merchants, acquirers and cardholders.

 · Bank net: This represents the existing network which interfaces acquirers, issuers, and the certificate management systems.

Messages for SEPP-compliant processing of payment transactions

 · Purchase order request

· Authorization request

· Authorization response

 Purchase Order Inquiry

· Purchase order Inquiry Response

Additional messages for online customer

· Initiate

· Invoice

·        Purchase order response(with Purchase order status)

                Messages for offline (i.e. e-mail) transactions or transaction sent to merchant not on-line with the acquirer

            · Purchase order response (acknowledgement without authorization)

SEPP PROCESS DIAGRAM