Secure Electronic Transaction - SET

Nowadays, the use of online credit card transactions is ubiquitous. That situation wasn’t always the case. In the early Internet days, handing out your CC number online was like asking a stranger on a subway platform to hold your wallet while you went to the bathroom, i.e. just an invitation to get robbed.

The Secure Electronic Transaction was an early attempt to make the process safer. It worked by hiding the card information so that it couldn't be accessed by hackers. The protocol was developed in the 1990s to secure online payments, at a time when such attempts were relatively novel. It has since been superseded by more advanced techniques.