A Secure Agent-Mediated Payment Protocol

Xiaolin Pang, Kian-Lee Tan, Yan Wang, Jian Ren

Abstract: While software agents have been employed in payment protocols, they are largely passive entities, i.e., they participate in the payment protocol but do not make decision. In this paper, we propose an agent-assisted payment protocol called LITESET/A+ that empowers the payment agent (PA) to perform encryption operation for its owner. This is realized by introducing a Trusted Third Party (TTP) in the payment system based on the SET protocol (Secure Electronic Transaction) and a novel signcryption-threshold scheme. In LITESET/A+, the PA and TTP collaborate together to ensure the same level of security as the SET specification. At the same time, with the signcryption-threshold scheme, the PA is more flexible and autonomous during trading.