Summary

---

We have developed a prototype architecture to support an efficient, secure and anonymous micro-payment system for high-volume, low-cost online e-tailing systems. This incorporates a broker used to generate, verify and redeem e-coins, a customer e-wallet stored either client or server-side, and vendor application server components. Our NetPay architecture provides for both secure and high transaction volume per item by using fast hashing functions to validate e-coin unspent indexes. NetPay is an off-line protocol allowing the vendors to interact only with customers after initial coin validation. We have assessed two variants of our micro-payment system deployed with an online newspaper website and compared these with a macro-payment, subscription-based variant of the website. These evaluations have indicated that for users the micro-payment approach has some appeal over traditional macro-payment approaches, and that for some usage patterns the micro-payment approach is far more efficient in terms of cost to the customer. We are continuing to enhance our NetPay system implementation and are exploring its usage for other e-commerce systems with a high volume/low cost transaction mix. These possible application domains for micro-payment include pay-per-search specialized online databases, pay-per-item online music, magazine and book sites, and pay-per-article online sports and news headline sites.

---