This document was last modified on 10 April, 1999.

The AusWeb series of World Wide Web Research

Conferences.

Netpay--An Efficient Protocol for Micropayments on the WWW


Xiaoling Dai, School of Multimedia Information Technology, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia xdai10@scu.edu.au

Bruce W N Lo, School of Multimedia Information Technology, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia blo@scu.edu.au


Keywords

Micropayment, Cryptography, Internet


Abstract

One of the major challenges of electronic payment systems is the high cost associated with the processing of payments. This is particularly serious in transactions where the transaction amount is small. This paper introduces Netpay, a secure, economical, easily implementable, and debit-based protocol for a micropayment system for the WWW. Netpay differs from previous protocols in the following aspects: Netpay uses touchstones signed by the broker and indices signed by vendors and passed to other vendors. The signed touchstone is used to verify the electronic currency - paywords, and the signed index is used to prevent double spending by customers and to resolve disputes between vendors.


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AusWeb99, the Fifth Australian World Wide Web Conference, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore NSW 2480, Australia Email: AusWeb99@scu.edu.au