SPKI based solution to anonymous payment and transaction authorization

Network commerce has been raising its head for a few years and has adopted credit cards as the most common means of payment. However, on an open network like internet, credit card based systems have problems. Especially problematic is the authentication of the parties involved. Privacy issues are important since the customer is always identified with each payment. A few solutions have emerged, but none of them has gained an upper hand and some have withered away as interest towards them has died. In this paper we discuss the limitations of current systems and the criteria for a good electronic payment system. Finally we propose a new, SPKI certificate based payment system that solves most of the problems we found.