Sun Microsystems has developed a new software application conforming to the bank-initiated Project Eleanor B2B e-payment specifications for online corporate transactions.
The new iPlanet Trustbase Payment Services package has been tested by five leading banks and meets the Identrus 'Project Eleanor' payment initiation specification, says the company. Project Eleanor was formed by bank-backed digital ID company Identrus to create an e-payment standard.
The new application is the first to extend the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) - a software platform designed for the provision of online services on demand - to banking customers.
The Trustbase Payment package links a customer's identity to back-end applications through the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager, and implements the appropriate financial method of payment. The application will keep a transaction history, and issue a payment instruction, all within seconds of the customer's initial request and residing seamlessly at the bank's site.
The new version 3.0 of Trustbase Transaction Manager will be available in November.
David Medeiros, director of research for global payments with TowerGroup, comments: "Banks had been constrained from offering online payment initiation services to their corporate customers due in part to the lack of a common industry standard and platform for Web-based payment initiation. For online B2B transactions, iPlanet Trustbase Payment Services and Identrus represent the critical first step in making such a capability a reality."