A peer-to-peer transaction authentication platform for mobile commerce with semi-offline architecture

Trusted third-party (TTP) based transaction authentication is traditionally applied to authenticate mobile commerce transactions. However, several issues can arise with this, including seller fraud, TTP performance bottlenecks, and the risk of operations being interrupted. A peer-to-peer mobile commerce transaction authentication platform (MCTAP) with a semi-offline transaction authentication mechanism is proposed in this work. In this, both buyer and seller mutually authenticate and sign the digital receipt for each other. The trusted transaction authentication center thus no longer needs to operate online transaction verification processes, and only has to deal with consumer disputes. MCTAP can raise the efficiency of transaction authentication and provide solutions for the one-way transaction notification systems adopted by most online shopping sites that may encounter seller fraud. The proposed solution is compared to other TTP-based and secure electronic transaction based transaction authentication mechanisms, and the results indicate that the MCTAP has the advantages of efficiency and a higher security level.