A need for secure payment methods in the mobile and conventional Internet has arisen as a result of the increase of on-line commerce. Most of the current payment methods that can be used in conducting transactions on the Internet have major drawbacks either in terms of functionality, usability, costs or security. The widely accepted way of securely and reliably authorizing electronic payment transactions is through the use of digital signatures in a PKI framework. Organizations like the WAP Forum and MeT Initiative have made efforts to introduce industry standards for bringing PKI capabilities to mobile phones. The WAP version 1.2.1 compliant handsets already come with support for making digital signatures using the wireless identity module WIM. These new capabilities readily lend themselves to implementing mobile payment systems. This paper presents a system that makes use of the MeT WPKI framework in implementing electronic payment authorization. The Mobile Payment System interacts with a merchant, payer and issuer as well as supporting back-end systems in coordinating secured payment transactions. It enables securely authorizing payment transactions using a standard WAP enabled handset. The focus in the paper is in describing the system model and the high level structure. The details of implementation aren't discussed when not essential.
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