Most new entrants into the mobile commerce marketplace are faced with a paradox; how can we attract users without merchants?, and how can we attract merchants without customers?

Without a huge investment in marketing to build consumer recognition, starting a new m-commerce service is risky.  Many successful companies on the web have managed to create successful payment services by utilizing the brand recognition and ubiquity of the popular card networks.  Attempts to marry credit cards and mobile phones are not new – encrypted phone wallet systems have been bundled with devices for a number of years. However, use of these wallet systems remains limited as the public failed to embrace shopping via WAP, frustrated by slow speeds and poor user interfaces. With mobile terminals more suited for browsing, and higher speeds from mobile data becoming the norm, we have developed a system to enable remote macro-purchases using existing credit card technology.

A number of banks use payment processing software from ClearCommerce Corp. to allow their customers who want to take credit card payments on-line to integrate payments into their e-commerce solution. ClearCommerce provides an XML payment API for e-commerce website builders to send complete information about a transaction to a capturing server at the associated financial institution. Typically an e-commerce web-server will generate an XML document associated with a transaction, including details about the products in the order, the delivery address, total price etc. This document is then sent to the bank’s processing servers, often via a HTTPS (Secure Sockets Layer-enabled) POST form. Merchants are able to define specific security rules that control a transaction, specifically using the Address Verification Service (AVS) to determine whether the delivery address matches the address registered with the card account. Further, advanced fraud detection rules can prevent transactions continuing given suspicious buying patterns such as a card being used to repeatedly buy high-value items.

The XEPS (XML-Enabled Payment System) project attempts to create a framework whereby developers could add this functionality to mobile applications and complete a transaction entirely from the device. This project used Python for Series 60 Nokia mobile phones in order to rapidly develop the concept on a mobile device. However, Python for Series 60 (PyS60) does not offer the complete XML package associated with standard Python releases. Fortunately, researchers at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology have ported the pyexpat Python XML module from the full Python release for use with Python Series 60. This module enabled the generation of well-formed XML documents from the appropriate function calls.