Liberty Alliance To Unveil First Standards
The Liberty Alliance is to unveil its standards for online ID authentication next Monday, almost a year after its inception, with a move to enable users to choose which Liberty accounts to inter-link. Liberty will start by enabling users visiting MasterCard.com, for example to surf to United.com without having to retype a password, ahead of detailed profiles to plug into Liberty-enabled Web sites. Microsoft, Liberty's main competitor, this week teamed with Arcot Systems to extend its Passport system to include the authorization of online card payments, but analysts cite
Passport's limited network and security concerns as hurdles to its latest push.Single online IDs, however, are "like using the same key for your house, car and safe deposit box", argues Chris Hoofnagle, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Microsoft is said to favor a single Internet ID standard and to be "focused on answering broader customer demand for security in the web services environment", but still wants Liberty to use its Passport system. Despite this, experts do not see Passport, even with Arcot on its side, as a threat to leading authentication services, with Forester analyst, Laura Koetzle, noting, "[some] companies ... have built their brands on authorizing credit card payments".
Koetzle, for one, is "having trouble buying Microsoft's play as an infomediary here... this is very much the domain of the Visas and MasterCards ... and now PayPal". While citing eBay's struggle in marketing its Billpoint P2P payments system before acquiring PayPal, experts believe one partnership is insufficient to render Microsoft a competitor against PayPal or other P2P payment firms. If a major bank brand like Bank of America was to adopt Passport, consumer trust could improve, Koetzle says, but essentially, Microsoft has [not] proved a compelling benefit for consumers to use Passport [for credit card authentication]".Related Links
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