On the Synergy Between Certificate Verification Trees and PayTree-like Micropayments

Abstract. A substantial number of micropayment schemes in the literature are based on distributing the cost of a digital signature over several successive micropayments (e.g. Payword). Thus, a stable relationship between user and merchant is assumed: the micropayments validated by the same signature must take place between the same user and merchant. This stability is ill-suited for surfing on the web, a situation in which successive micropayments are made to different merchants. Thus coin-based micropayments, in which successive micropayments can be unrelated to one another, are far more interesting. One practical coinbased micropayment system is PayTree, which is amazingly similar to PKIs based on certificate verification trees (CVTs). We propose in this paper a synthesis of a CVT-based PKI with a PayTree-like micropayment system. The proposed system achieves a threefold reduction of the cost of public key certification and coin processing through: 1) sharing certificates by two appl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: EUROPKI
• Authors: Josep Domingo-Ferrer
• Keywords: EUROPKI 2004, Micropayment, Public Key, Security Privacy, Successive Micropayments