A Secure Payment Protocol For Supporting Credit-And Debit-Card Transactions Over Wireless Networks

The proliferation of wireless devices, offering connectivity and convenience, continues to exert tremendous pressure on merchants to deploy secure wireless applications including electronic commerce. One key element, which would assist them in fulfilling this requirement, is a standard protocol for supporting both electronic credit card and debit card transactions over wireless networks. Although the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol offers end-to-end security for credit card transactions over a wired infrastructure, there are several factors including bandwidth requirements which make it unsuitable for wireless applications. This paper presents the Wireless Payment Protocol (WPP) that supports both credit-card and debit -card transactions using the Wireless Application Protocol’s (WAP) Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) and Smart Card technology. In addition, a brief comparison to SET is made in order to illustrate the key attributes of the WPP.