Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) was a standard protocol for securing credit card transactions over insecure networks, specifically, the Internet. SET was not itself a payment system, but rather a set of security protocols and formats that enable users to employ the existing credit card payment infrastructure on an open network in a secure fashion. However, it failed to gain traction. VISA now promotes the 3-D Secure scheme.SET was developed by SETco, led by VISA and MasterCard (and involving other companies such as GTE, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, RSA, Safelayer --formerly SET Projects-- and VeriSign) starting in 1996. SET was based on X.509 certificates with several extensions. The first version was finalised in May 1997 and a pilot test was announced in July 1998.