Visa, MasterCard Plan Internet Venture : Technology: The titans are teaming up to develop a safe way for consumers to pay by credit card.

Visa and MasterCard will announce today that they have teamed up to develop a safe way for consumers to pay for goods on the Internet using their credit cards, sources said.

The companies, which have been pursuing separate courses, decided to unite their efforts to create scrambling software that will allow consumers to make purchases on the global computer network without having to worry about hackers stealing their credit card numbers, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Both companies said they will make an announcement today about electronic commerce but were not more specific.

Because Visa International, based in San Francisco, and New York-based MasterCard have enormous brand recognition among consumers worldwide, their partnership could have a powerful impact in the on-line financial services arena.

The two companies, both owned by groups of banks, together have 691.5 million cards worldwide and have made enormous investments in developing global networks for handling electronic payments.

The partnership underscores the pressure that credit card companies, banks and technology firms are under to make a splash in the on-line world as Microsoft gets ready to roll out its new operating system, Windows 95, which will have an on-line service bundled in with it. Windows 95 goes on sale Aug. 24.

Visa and MasterCard are intensely competitive, but on-line experts said teaming up in this case makes sense because it will give them an edge.

“They’re two of the most recognizable brand names in the world, and they’d have a leg up on any effort they undertake,” said Adam Schoenfeld, senior analyst at Jupiter Communications, a market research company in New York.

Visa has a joint venture with Microsoft to develop a software program to keep credit card payments private by issuing passwords to customers.

MasterCard has been working with Netscape Communications Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based software company that makes a popular system for browsing the Internet’s World Wide Web and is developing scrambling software for secure payment transactions.

The announcement today will be the latest in a slew of partnerships and product offerings for transacting business and handling payments on the Internet.

Europe’s largest credit card company, a consortium of banks called Europay, announced last week a joint venture with International Business Machines Corp. to develop secure payments over the Internet. In recent weeks, several banks have announced on-line banking services on the Internet.

The market for on-line bank accounts and payment services is thought to be huge, and the ability to ensure consumers that their money will be safe from hackers is the key to so-called electronic commerce.