M&E-NetPay: a micropayment system for mobile and electronic commerce

As an increasing number of people purchase goods and services online, micropayment systems are becoming particularly important for mobile and electronic commerce. We have designed and developed such a system called M&E-NetPay (Mobile and Electronic NetPay). With open interoperability and mobility, M&E-NetPay uses web services to connect brokers and vendors, providing secure, flexible and reliable credit services over the Internet. In particular, M&E-NetPay makes use of a secure, inexpensive and debit-based off-line protocol that allows vendors to interact only with customers, after validating coins. The design of the architecture and protocol of M&E-NetPay are presented, together with the implementation of its prototype in ringtone and wallpaper sites. To validate our system, we have conducted its evaluations on performance, usability and heuristics. Furthermore, we compare our system to the CORBA-based (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) off-line micro-payment systems. The results have demonstrated that M&E-NetPay outperforms the .NET-based M&E-NetPay system in terms of performance and user satisfaction.