Payment frameworks for the purchase of electronic products and services

End users' demand for electronic contents and services is increasing dramatically. Vendors and service providers might want to obtain benefits by charging for their electronic contents and services. Thus, they might need to offer different payment protocols to make the payment. Payment frameworks appeared for this purpose. However, currently, none of them provides a comprehensive solution that facilitates the negotiation and the choice of the payment protocol to perform the purchase. In this paper, we present the general approach we have followed for the design of different payment frameworks that facilitate these processes. This approach is built upon the base of a set of generic components that we have defined. Namely, a generic payment protocol for supporting payments with different protocols; a payment schema that allows the description of payment information and the definition of payment extensions to some protocols; a generic wallet Application Programming Interface (API) to support the definition of wallets for different protocols, and a payment ontology for the semantic annotation and description of payment information. These generic components can be utilized in different scenarios and provide a uniform way to make purchases, which generates user trust and simplifies its use.

Research highlights
► A general approach for the design of payment frameworks that help the negotiation and the choice of the payment protocol.
► A wallet Application Programming Interface to support the definition of wallets for payment protocols in a uniform way.
► A schema that allows the description of payment information and the definition of payment extensions to some protocols.
► The definition of a payment ontology for the semantic annotation and description of payment information.
► The design of different payment frameworks for the purchase of the main current types of e-products.