Anonymous Payment in a Client Centric Model for Digital Ecosystems

Most of the payment protocols designed in recent years for mobile payment systems are based on a scenario where all the entities are directly connected to one another. This scenario (formally called "full connectivity scenario") offers advantages to protocol's designers because it allows them to simplify the design and development of payment protocols without losing security guarantees. However, the "full connectivity" scenario does not consider those situations in which the merchant cannot communicate with the acquirer due to absence of Internet access in his/her infrastructure, and the use of other communication technologies is unaffordable due to the inconveniences and costs associated. In order to overcome this restriction and contribute to the progress of m-commerce, in this paper we propose a novel anonymous protocol for a mobile payment system based on a client centric model that employs a digital signature scheme with message recovery using self-certified public keys. As a result, our proposal illustrates how a merchant can sell goods in a secure way even if she can not directly communicate with the acquirer.