Ch-ching

A lot of folks have resisted Micro$oft’s Passport program, given M$’s demonstrated screwball security and Mongol-Hordesque business tactics. Unfortunately, it looks like folks who want to use Visa cards on-line may end up having to use Passport to authenticate themselves to the Visa system.

The extent to which this is bizarre can be found in these paragraphs:

So the Arcot partnership legitimizes Microsoft’s Passport as an online authentication technology. It also benefits the credit card companies because they can tap into Microsoft’s large base of customers, she said.
“It’s good for Microsoft because up until now, no one stood behind the authenticity of the (Passport) identities. You can register as easily as ‘Donald Duck’ as you can with your real name,” Litan said. “Now (Passport users) are linked to credit card companies. There is going to be a bank or credit card issuer standing behind the identity.”

Get that? Passport isn’t offering anything to the credit card companies besides a list of marks users. It’s the credit card company that’s providing security to Passport.

Microsoft has always offered an option for people to store their credit card information on Passport, but only 14 percent of Passport users did, because they didn’t feel the system was secure enough, Litan said.
“People will start trusting the system now that it’s linked to credit cards and has protection by Visa and MasterCard,” Litan said.

“Nobody trusts us, so we’ll force them to use us anyway. Woo-hoo!”

Great.