A business-to-business media service framework on extranet and its settlement support application

Describes a service that supports business-to-business electronic commerce, in particular financial settlement operations between companies. Recently, there has been a move toward greater integration of enterprises. In business finance, multilateral payment netting systems can improve efficiency for business groups. Most netting systems were developed to operate on mainframe computers as in-house systems of specific companies within a business group, but they have some problems. For example, it is hard for a company to manage settlements and also operate and maintain complex computer systems. Also, the initial costs of developing and operating networks in different environments are high. We have started a new provider service that can connect different networks and that provides fair and safe communications for various types of companies, and we have developed a netting system using the infrastructure of this provider service