Enhancing Security of Online Payments: A Conceptual Model for a Robust E-Payment Protocol for E-Commerce

Abstract

Abstract. The rapid growth of the Internet and its adoption for commercial transactions is indisputable. However, the core security protocols of the Internet today are susceptible to security lapses, especially when it comes to online payment systems which are indispensable to the growth of e-commerce across the globe. This has led to the development of various online payment protocols to ensure the security of online transactions such as Secure Electronic Transaction and The Secure Socket Layer. In designing online payment protocols, there is often a trade-off between security and convenience. More and more participants of online transactions suffer in one way or another from fraudsters. Ghana is gaining notoriety in online fraud, and there is therefore a need to protect the interest of the participants in the areas of authentication, confidentiality, replay attacks as well as flexibility if e-commerce is to thrive in developing countries. This paper looks at some online payment protocols and develops a conceptual model of a protocol which requires live authentication from the cardholder. This ensures security, convenience, cardholder authentication, and verification of merchant; it is easy to implement without complications and to compare with other existing online payment protocols. Participants that are considered in this work are the Cardholder, Issuer, Merchant, and Acquirer.

A Review of Secure Authentication based e-Payment Protocol

“…Recently, the secure wireless transactionschemehas turned into a research extent towards payment system.Some of them have concentrated towards security and privacy issues alone such as Ray et al [14], Kouta et al [15], Cui et al [16], Tiwari et al [17],Raghuwanshi et al [18], Abdellaoui and Pasquet [19], Mazumdar and Giri [20], Takyi and Gyaase [21],Lawal et al [22],Khan et al [5],Aigbe and Akpojaro [23],Kim et al [24]. On the other hand, focused on secure mobile payment system [25]- [30]and some of them have focused Secure Electronic Transaction protocol [31]- [33].Those are discussed as follows.…”

“…Takyi and Gyaase [21]suggested that Robust Electronic Payment Protocol (REPP) fares better when compared theoretically with live cardholder verification in terms of security, usability, verification of cardholder and execution. But, the REPP authenticates the merchant just as SET does.…”

Optimized Authentication Model for Online Transaction Payments

“…The popular commercial activities, especially on the internet, has gained maximum prominence in the field of commerce as more and more goods and services are seen on the internet daily for online transactions. Buying and selling online, also known as e-commerce, is efficient, easy, reliable and convenient (Takyi and Gyaase, 2012). In order to have reliable e-commerce services, there must be digital measures in place to check the security of users to ensure safety in online transactions with access control measures such as authentication and others measures like privacy, integrity and non-repudiation.…”

“…The payments for online transactions are made either with a credit card, debit card, or direct bank payment. The payment process poses some level of risk because the entire payment procedures are susceptible to cyber-attack (Strategy, 2017).…”

“…Cyber fraudsters expose the weakness in online payment systems. Their criminal activities cause the loss of over millions of dollars globally every year (Takyi and Gyaase, 2012;Strategy, 2017). Cybercriminals compromise accounts and complete fraudulent transactions in many different ways (Levi and Kroc, 2001) such as replay attacks.…”