A Secure m-Payment Protocol for Mobile Devices

Mobile devices, such as cell phones, and PDAs are becoming more popular each day. The large number of mobile users along with the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices has created a huge market for mobile commerce. But for that market to be realized users have to trust the security measures of m-commerce in general and m-payment in particular. In this paper a secure m-payment protocol for mobile devices has been proposed. The main objective in the proposed technique is to have the highest impact, and acceptance among average users. Hence, GSM the fastest growing network that accounts for 75% of the world´s digital mobile market is selected as the network. For wider acceptance the simple and user friendly SMS text messaging protocol is selected as the transport channel. The proposed technique is independent of security measures and the systems inside banks and financial institutions. A pilot version of the protocol has been implemented. Simulation results, presented in this paper, indicate that the protocol achieves the expected level of security and can manage most security attacks, while remaining cost effective and easy to use for both the users, and the service providers