MAST: an Agent Framework to Support B2C E-Commerce

In this paper we present an XML-based multi-agent system, called Multi Agent System for Traders (MAST), that completely supports Business-to-Customer E-commerce activities, including advertisements and payments. MAST helps both customers and merchants in their tasks with a homogeneous and personalized approach. In particular, E-payments in MAST are implemented under the availability of financial institutions. This avoids exchanging of sensible customers’ information and reinforces the confidence between customers and merchants. A complete prototype of MAST has been implemented in the JADE framework, and it has been exploited for realizing some experiments, in order to evaluate its performances.