Using Mobile Telephone as an Operator Independent, Secure Micro-Payment Tool

Abstract

With the latest advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), using different technologies for electronic-payment has become a major issue in the retail market. The use of portable communication devices became particularly attractive candidates when versatility, security and simplicity features of payment technologies are considered. In this paper, we investigate the use of mobile communication devices as versatile, secure and simple micro-payment tools, which satisfy the related financial, technological, computational and managerial requirements. The versatility and security of the method comes from the use of a mobile telephone and a Variable Transaction Number (VTN) in each transaction. Experimental results have shown that, the systematic requirements for the implementation of this technology are minimal and the costs involved are very much reasonable.