On-line payment method for small amount transactions using hierarchical prepaid cards

Traditional payment methods such as credit cards are not suitable for small amount payment because the transaction may cost certain commission comparable to the small amount payment. When we buy a cheap item at real shop, we pay by cash. But, how about online shopping where you cannot pay by cash? There are a ton of contents online having potential value to sell but not as expensive as credit card payment fits such as multimedia clips. How an online shopper can buy them? A widely used solution is aggregation: online merchants bundle several (sometimes unnecessary) items together to multiply the price. Another solution is having payment method suitable for small amount, aka micropayment. There has been many research-level micropayment schemes developed, using cryptographic schemes to eliminate the need to access central server for authorization purposes what researchers claim costly operation. Such schemes with "off-line" verification enable banks or other participants to trace back to a crook that cheats by double spending. However, such schemes cannot stop double spending itself and thus a crook can run away before they become aware of the cheat[?]. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-02-28. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/154 On-line payment method for small amount transactions using hierarchical prepaid cards (Extended Abstract) T6ru Egashira, and Jonathan M. Smith [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Abstract follows.. .Abstract follows.. .