Digital certificates and payment systems

Abstract This article provides a brief overview of the kinds of digital certificates that are used in some electronic payment systems; namely S.W.I.F.T., CHAPS, EMV and SET. These electronic payment systems use public key certificates to protect the integrity and confidentiality of payment and key management messages. The information held in certificates varies by application: S.W.I.F.T. and CHAPS operate over private networks, have a limited membership and can use simple certificates; EMV also uses short certificates — but it has to because of the scarcity of ICC memory; SET on the other hand does not suffer this constraint and can use relatively long certificates that support a wide variety of participants.