Abstract
Mobile Payments (MP) have been evolving over a decade and proliferation is largely for contactless wallet services. Most such services are closed loop payment services provided by specific service providers. Even after a decade of trials, proliferation is limited to closed loop systems (Eg: Starbucks) and card based wallet services for contactless payments. Independent Payment Service Providers (IPSPs) providing managed wallet services are becoming popular and have the potential for MP based services. Providers like PayPal have begun to provide such services and are capturing the market.Various studies have been conducted to investigate the lack of proliferation of MP. Three major causes are the heterogeneous nature of the m-payment landscape, lack of co-operation, interoperability amongst the various m-payment players and a lack of standardization. Towards this, the study proposes a classification model that is transaction-centric rather than the current models that are m-payment player-centric.
Services such as PayPal have the advantage of instant settlements for their subscribers. Wallet services serve a niche need for retail payments and specifically low value payments. The intention of providing interoperability between such providers is to fulfill the need for instant settlements for low value payments. This could, potentially target cash payments which require instant settlements.
This study details a service architecture and a service description. Based on this, the Unified Mobile payment Transaction Exchange Service (UMTES) protocol is designed for low value payments with instant settlements. The payment protocol intends to be Simple, Speedy and Secure. The UMTES design implementation performs comparably with the time taken for a cash payment process at a PoS when performance measurements are made in a simulated environment. The implementation has its limitations, a predominant one being that the existing regulations do not explicitly permit interoperability between IPSPs, although they are recognized as non-bank financial institutions.
| Date of Award | Sept 2014 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Khalid Al-Begain (Supervisor) |