Mobile P2P Payment was designed to replace cash-based transactions. The cell phone has revolutionised the way that we operate. It has evolved from simply being a communication device to also being our calendar, instant messaging device, address book, camera, photo browser, and shopping list organiser. Cell phones are also primed to take over as our primary payment vehicle. Indeed, in countries such as Japan and Korea, it is already possible to pay for vending machine purchases, groceries, and even airline tickets, using just your cell phone. It is quite likely that, in a few years, every mobile phone service provider will have some sort of mobile payment solution – if they do not already.
However, the current mobile solutions all require infrastructure support. In particular, they cannot work if at least one of the parties involved in the payment is not connected to some back-end payment server (via either SMS or GSM/CDMA based technology). However, there are many situations where this connectivity may not be possible or desired.
Ideally, there would be ubiquitous wireless networking that is reliable and secure. However, wireless connectivity can be affected by urban canyons, weather, incompatibilities between telecom carriers, and heavy network traffic. For example, it is not unheard of for SMS messages to be delayed by several minutes, which would lead to a poor user experience for a mobile payment system relying on SMS.
These ....