An Endorsement-Based Mobile Payment System for a Disaster Area

Abstract

A payment system in a disaster area is essential for people to buy necessities such as groceries, clothing, and medical supplies. However, existing payment systems require the needed communication infrastructures (like wired networks and cellular networks) to enable transactions, so that these systems cannot be relied on in disaster areas, where these communication infrastructures may be destroyed. In this paper, we propose a mobile payment system, adopting infrastructure less mobile adhoc networks (MANETs), which allow users to shop in disaster areas while providing secure transactions. Specifically, we propose an endorsement-based scheme to guarantee each transaction and a scheme to provide monitoring based on location information, and thus achieve transaction validity and reliability. Our mobile payment system can also prevent collusion between two parties and reset and recover attacks by any user. Security is ensured by using location-based mutual monitoring by nearby users, avoiding thereby double spending in the system.