Motorola and VeriSign Inc. said they plan to team up to
develop and market solutions for secure e-commerce transactions to users of
Internet-enabled wireless devices.
The companies said consumers will be able to purchase items using an
Internet-enabled wireless phone, for example, with the confidence that the
merchant is who it claims to be and that their purchase information is
private and secure. Merchants would likewise be confident that consumers’
identities are valid.
VeriSign provides Internet security services including authentication,
validation, and payment.
“By combining Motorola’s leadership in the wireless communication market with
VeriSign’s proven experience in developing trust services for the Internet,
we are accelerating the time when wireless e-commerce is a common, everyday
occurrence,” said Richard Yanowitch, executive vice president of marketing
for VeriSign.
Motorola and VeriSign said they will develop a range of authentication,
validation, encryption and payment solutions for wireless device
manufacturers, carriers, consumers and e-commerce service providers (such as
financial institutions, media companies, ASPs and Business-to-Business and
Business-to-Customer exchanges).
On Monday, VeriSign rolled out a new suite of wireless electronic commerce
services that had been in development including:
A wireless personal trust
agent or micro-client code that can be embedded in handheld devices enabling
them to use private keys along with digital certificates and signatures;
short-lived wireless server certificates that provide both authentication and
real-time certificate validation for handhelds; and Gateway-assisted SSL, a
new trust model enabling network service providers to substitute existing SSL
certificates with wireless certificates.