US 6,163,772 AGrant

Virtual Point of Sale Processing Using Gateway-Initiated Messages

Issue Date:2000-12-19

•27 Claims

•57 Drawing Sheets

Abstract

Secure transmission of data is provided between a plurality of computer systems over a public communication system, such as the Internet. For example, secure transmission of data is provided between a merchant server and an acquirer gateway using Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) compliant messages. However, gateway-initiated messages are not SET compliant. Accordingly, secure transmission of data using additional messages that are not SET compliant is provided in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. In one embodiment, a method for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, includes establishing a first communication link (e.g., operating under the Internet Protocol) between an acquirer gateway and a merchant server, the first communication link being initiated by the acquirer gateway, and transmitting a gateway-initiated message (e.g., a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME) -encapsulated PKCS-7 message that includes a request for management information base data of the merchant server) via the first communication link from the acquirer gateway to the merchant server. The method also includes establishing a second communication link (e.g., operating under the Internet Protocol) between the acquirer gateway and the merchant server, the second communication link being initiated by the merchant server, and transmitting a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message via the second communication link from the merchant server to the acquirer gateway.

Metadata

Assignee

Hewlett-Packard Company

Inventors

Glenn A. Kramer
Jay C. Weber

Application Information

Application Number:US 1058991

Filing Date:1998-06-26

Priority Date:1996-06-17

Art Unit:277

Classifications

IPC:

G06F 1760H04L 1266

Field of Search:

70571370977;78;79;53;16151;152;153;201224;230;249

Patent Drawings (57 sheets)

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the secure, electronic payment in exchange for goods and services purchased over an open communication network, and in particular, to virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages.

BACKGROUND

The present invention relates to an electronic representation of a monetary system for implementing electronic money payments as an alternative medium of economic exchange to cash, checks, credit and debit cards, and electronic funds transfer. The Electronic-Monetary System is a hybrid of currency, check, card payment systems, and electronic funds transfer systems possessing many of the benefits of these systems with few of their limitations. The system utilizes electronic representations of money that are designed to be universally accepted and exchanged as economic value by subscribers of the monetary system.

Today, approximately 350 billion coin and currency transactions occur between individuals and institutions every year. The extensive use of coin and currency transactions has limited the automation of individual transactions such as purchases, bank account deposits, and withdrawals. Individual cash transactions are burdened by the need to have the correct amount of cash or providing change. Furthermore, the handling and managing of paper cash and coins is inconvenient, costly, and time consuming for both individuals and financial institutions.

Although checks may be written for any specific amount up to the amount available in the account, checks have very limited transferability and must be supplied from a physical inventory. Paper-based checking systems do not offer sufficient relief from the limitations of cash transactions, sharing many of the inconveniences of handling currency while adding the inherent delays and costs associated with processing checks. To this end, economic exchange has striven for greater convenience at a lower cost, while also seeking improved security.

Automation has achieved some of these qualities for large transactions through computerized Electronic Funds Transfer ("EFT") systems. EFT is essentially a process of value exchange achieved through the banking system's centralized computer transactions. EFT services are a transfer of payments utilizing electronic "checks," which are used primarily by large commercial organizations.

Home banking bill payment services are examples of an EFT system used by individuals to make payments from a home computer. Currently, home banking initiatives have found few customers. Of the banks that have offered services for payments, account transfers, and information over the telephone lines using personal computers, less than one percent of the bank's customers are using the service. Home banking has not been a successful product, because, for example, the customer cannot deposit and withdraw money as needed in this type of system.

Current EFT systems, credit cards, or debit cards, which are used in conjunction with an on-line system to transfer money between accounts, such as between the account of a merchant and that of a customer, cannot satisfy the need for an automated transaction system providing an ergonomic interface. Examples of EFT systems that provide non-ergonomic interfaces are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,476,259; 5,459,304; 5,452,352; 5,448,045; 5,478,993; 5,455,407; 5,453,601; 5,465,291; and 5,485,510.

To implement an automated, convenient transaction that can dispense some form of economic value, there has been a trend towards off-line payments. For example, numerous ideas have been proposed for some form of "electronic money" that can be used in cashless payment transactions as alternatives to the traditional currency and check types of payment systems. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,595, entitled "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPLEMENTING ELECTRONIC CASH," and U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,059, entitled "MODULAR FUNDS TRANSFER SYSTEM." The more well-known techniques include magnetic stripe cards purchased for a given amount and from which a prepaid value can be deducted for specific purposes. Upon exhaustion of the economic value, the cards are thrown away. Other examples include memory cards or so called smart cards which are capable of repetitively storing information representing value that is likewise deducted for specific purposes. A smart card is generally a hand-held portable device that includes a microprocessor, input-output ports, and a non-volatile memory (e.g., a few kilobytes of memory).

It is desirable for a computer operated under the control of a merchant to obtain information offered by a customer and transmitted by a computer operating under the control of the customer over a publicly accessible packet-switched network (e.g., the Internet) to the computer operating under the control of the merchant, without risking the exposure of the information to interception by third parties that have access to the network, and to assure that the information is from an authentic source. It is further desirable for the merchant to transmit information, including a subset of the information provided by the customer, over such a network to a payment gateway computer system that is designated, by a bank or other financial institution that has the responsibility of providing payment on behalf of the customer, to authorize a commercial transaction on behalf of such a financial institution, without the risk of exposing that information to interception by third parties. Such institutions include, for example, financial institutions offering credit or debit card services.

One such attempt to provide such a secure transmission channel is a secure payment technology such as Secure Electronic Transaction (SET), jointly developed by the Visa and MasterCard card associations, and described in Visa and MasterCard's Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) Specification, Feb. 23, 1996, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. Other such secure payment technologies include Secure Transaction Technology ("STT"), Secure Electronic Payments Protocol ("SEPP"), Internet Keyed Payments ("IKP"), Net Trust, and Cybercash Credit Payment Protocol. One of ordinary skill in the art readily comprehends that any of the secure payment technologies can be substituted for the SET protocol without undue experimentation. Such secure payment technologies require the customer to operate software that is compliant with the secure payment technology, interacting with third-party certification authorities, thereby allowing the customer to transmit encoded information to a merchant, some of which can be decoded by the merchant, and some of which can be decoded only by a payment gateway specified by the customer.

Another such attempt to provide such a secure transmission channel is a general-purpose secure communication protocol such as Netscape, Inc.'s Secure Sockets Layer (hereinafter "SSL"), as described in Freier, Karlton & Kocher (hereinafter "Freier"), The SSL Protocol Version 3.0, March 1996, and herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. SSL enables secure transmission between two computers. SSL has the advantage that it does not require special-purpose software to be installed on the customer's computer, because it is already incorporated into widely available software is that many people utilize as their standard Internet access medium, and SSL does not require that the customer interact with any third-party certification authority. Instead, the support for SSL may be incorporated into software already in use by the customer (e.g., the commercially available Netscape Navigator.TM. World Wide Web browsing tool).

However, although a computer on an SSL connection may initiate a second SSL connection to another computer, a drawback to the SSL approach is each SSL connection supports only a two-computer connection. Therefore, SSL does not provide a mechanism for transmitting encoded information to a merchant for retransmission to a payment gateway such that a subset of the information is readable to the payment gateway but not to the merchant. Thus, although SSL allows for robustly secure two-party data transmission, it does not meet the ultimate need of the electronic commerce market for robustly secure three-party data transmission.

Other examples of general-purpose secure communication protocols include Private Communications Technology ("PCT") from Microsoft, Inc., Secure Hyper-Text Transport Protocol ("SHTTP") from Terisa Systems, Shen, Kerberos, Photuris, and Pretty Good Privacy ("PGP"), which meets the IPSEC criteria. One of ordinary skill in the art readily comprehends that any of the general-purpose secure communication protocols can be substituted for the SSL transmission protocol without undue experimentation.

More recently, banks desired an Internet payment solution that emulates existing Point of Sale (POS) applications that are currently installed on their host computers and require minimal changes to their host systems. This is a critical requirement, because any downtime for a bank's host computer system represents an enormous expense. Currently, VeriFone supports over fourteen hundred different payment-related applications. The large number of applications is necessary to accommodate a wide variety of host message formats, diverse methods for communicating to a variety of hosts with different dial-up and direct-connect schemes, and different certification around the world. In addition, there are a wide variety of business processes that dictate how a Point of Sale (POS) terminal queries a user for data and subsequently displays the data. Also, various vertical market segments, such as hotels, car rental agencies, restaurants, retail sales, mail sales, and telephone sales require interfaces for different types of data to be entered, and provide different discount rates to merchants for complying with various data types. Moreover, a plethora of report generation mechanisms and formats are utilized by merchants that banking organizations work with appropriately.

Internet-based payment solutions require additional security measures that are not found in conventional POS terminals. This additional requirement is necessitated, because Internet communication is done over publicly-accessible, unsecured communication lines in stark contrast to the private, secure, dedicated phone or leased line service utilized between a traditional merchant and an acquiring bank. Thus, it is critical that any solution utilizing the Internet for a communication backbone employ some form of cryptography.

As discussed above, the current state-of-the-art in Internet-based payment processing is a protocol referred to as SET. Because SET messages are uniform across all implementations, banks cannot differentiate themselves in any reasonable way. Also, because SET is not a proper superset of all protocols utilized today, there are bank protocols that cannot be mapped or translated into SET, because they require data elements for which SET has no placeholder. Further, SET only handles the message types directly related to authorizing and capturing credit card transactions and adjustments to these authorizations or captures. In a typical POS terminal in the physical world, these messages comprise almost the entire volume of the total number of messages between the merchant and the authorizing bank, but only half of the total number of different message types. These message types, which are used infrequently, but which are critical to the operation of the POS terminal must be supported for proper transaction processing.

SUMMARY

In one embodiment, a method for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, includes receiving a first message (e.g., a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME)-encapsulated PKCS-7 message) from a gateway (e.g., an acquirer gateway) at a server (e.g., a merchant server) via a first channel, the first channel operating under a gateway-initiated messaging protocol. The method also includes transmitting a second message (e.g., a SET message or an extended SET message) from the server to the gateway via a second channel, the second channel operating under a server-initiated messaging protocol.

In one embodiment, an apparatus for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, includes a gateway (e.g., an acquirer gateway), the gateway transmitting a first message (e.g., a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME) -encapsulated PKCS-7 message) to a server (e.g., a merchant server) via a first channel, the first channel operating under a gateway-initiated messaging protocol. The apparatus also includes the server transmitting a second message (e.g., a SET message or an extended SET message) to the gateway via a second channel, the second channel operating under a server-initiated messaging protocol.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other aspects and advantages are better understood from the following detailed description with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a representative hardware environment in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 1B depicts an overview in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 1C is a block diagram of a payment processing system in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 2 depicts a more detailed view of the customer computer system in communication with the merchant system using the customer-merchant session operating under the SSL protocol in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 3 depicts an overview of the method of securely supplying payment information to a payment gateway in order to obtain payment authorization in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 4 depicts the stages of generating and transmitting a payment authorization request in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 5A through 5F depict views of the payment authorization request and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 6A and 6B depict the stages of processing a payment authorization request and generating and transmitting a payment authorization request response in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 7A through 7J depict views of the payment authorization response and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 8 depicts the stages of processing a payment authorization response in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 9 depicts an overview of the method of securely supplying payment capture information to the payment gateway computer system in order to obtain payment capture in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 10 depicts the stages of generating and transmitting a payment capture request in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 11A through 11F depict views of the payment capture request and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 12A and 12B depict the stages of processing a payment capture request and generating and transmitting a payment capture request response in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 13A through 13F depict views of the payment capture response and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 14 depicts the stages of processing a payment capture response in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 15A and 15B depict transaction processing of merchant and consumer transactions in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 16 illustrates a transaction class hierarchy block diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 17 shows a typical message flow between the consumer, the merchant, the vPOS terminal, and the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 18A through 18E are block diagrams of the extended SET architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of vPOS merchant pay customization in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 20A through 20H are block diagrams and flow diagrams setting forth the detailed logic of thread processing;

FIG. 21 is a detailed diagram of a multithreaded gateway engine in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram of Internet-based processing in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 23 illustrates a Gateway's role in a network in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 24 is a block diagram of the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 25 is a block diagram of the vPOS Terminal Architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 26 is an architecture block diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 27 is a block diagram of the payment manager architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 28 is a Consumer Payment Message Sequence diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 29 is an illustration of a certificate issuance form in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 30 illustrates a certificate issuance response in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 31 illustrates a collection of payment instrument holders in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 32 illustrates a default payment instrument bitmap in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 33 illustrates a selected payment instrument with a fill-in-the-blanks for the cardholder in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 34 illustrates a coffee purchase utilizing the newly defined VISA card in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 35 is a flow diagram of conditional authorization of payment in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 36 through 48 are screen displays in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 49 shows how the vPOS authenticates an incoming response to a request in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 50 is a flow diagram for the merchant interaction with the Test Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIGS. 51 through 61 are flow diagrams depicting the detailed logic of the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 62 is the main administration display for the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 63 is a configuration panel in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 64 is a host communication display for facilitating communication between the gateway and the acquirer payment host in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 65 is a Services display in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

FIG. 66 is a graphical representation of the gateway transaction database in accordance with a preferred embodiment;

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Recently, the Internet was proposed as a communication medium connecting personal computers with specialized reader hardware for facilitating reading and writing to smart cards. However, the Internet is not a secure communication medium, and value transfer is not secured. Thus, secure value transfer processing to facilitate smart card processing over the Internet is needed. In addition, support to ensure that no third party can hijack a value transfer transaction is required. For example, a hijack can occur if a third party diverts the transaction before it even starts. In the prior art face-to-face solution, both parties can confirm the other party's identity. However, the Internet generally separates the parties with miles of network lines.

A preferred embodiment of a system in accordance with the present invention is preferably practiced in the context of a personal computer such as a commercially available IBM PS/2, Apple Macintosh computer, or UNIX-based workstation. FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a representative hardware environment in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In particular, FIG. 1A illustrates a hardware configuration of a typical workstation having a central processing unit 10, such as a microprocessor, and a number of other units interconnected via a system bus 12. The workstation shown in FIG. 1A also includes a Random Access Memory (RAM) 14, a Read Only Memory (ROM) 16, an I/O adapter 18 for connecting peripheral devices such as disk storage units 20 to bus 12, a user interface adapter 22 for connecting a keyboard 24, a mouse 26, a speaker 28, a microphone 32, and possibly other user interface devices such as a touch screen (not shown) to bus 12, a communications adapter 34 for connecting the workstation to a communication network (e.g., a data processing network), and a display adapter 36 for connecting bus 12 to a display device 38. The workstation typically has resident thereon an operating system such as the Microsoft Windows NT.TM. or the Microsoft Windows 95.TM. Operating System (OS), the IBM OS/2, the Apple MAC OS, or the UNIX OS such as the HP-UX OS. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the present invention may also be implemented on platforms and operating systems other than those mentioned above.

A preferred embodiment is written using the JAVA programming language, the C programming language, and the C++ programming language and utilizes an object-oriented programming methodology. Object-oriented programming (OOP) has become increasingly used to develop complex applications. As OOP moves toward the mainstream of software design and development, various software solutions require adaptation to make use of the benefits of OOP. A need exists for these principles of OOP to be applied to a messaging interface of an electronic messaging system such that a set of OOP classes and objects for the messaging interface can be provided.

Generally, OOP is a process of developing computer software using objects, which includes analyzing the problem, designing the system, and constructing the program. An object is a software package that typically includes both data and a collection of related structures and procedures. Because an object includes both data and a collection of structures and procedures, it can be visualized as a self-sufficient component that does not require other additional structures, procedures, or data to perform its specific task. Therefore, OOP views a computer program as a collection of largely autonomous components, called objects, each of which is responsible for a specific task. This concept of packaging data, structures, and procedures together in one component or module is called encapsulation.

In general, OOP components are reusable software modules that present an interface that conforms to an object model and are accessed at run-time through a component integration architecture. A component integration architecture is a set of architecture mechanisms which allow software modules in different process spaces to utilize each others capabilities or functions. This is generally implemented by assuming a common component object model on which to build the architecture.

It is worthwhile to differentiate between an object and a class of objects at this point. An object is a single instance of the class of objects, which is often just called a class. A class of objects can be viewed as a blueprint, from which many objects can be formed.

OOP allows the computer programmer to create an object that is a part of another object. For example, the object representing a piston engine is said to have a composition-relationship with the object representing a piston. In reality, a piston engine comprises a piston, valves, and many other components; the fact that a piston is an element of a piston engine can be logically and semantically represented in OOP by two objects. OOP also allows creation of an object that "depends from" another object. If there are two objects, one representing a piston engine and the other representing a piston engine which the piston is made of ceramic, then the relationship between the two objects is not that of composition. A piston engine in which the piston is ceramic does not make up a piston engine. Rather, it is merely one kind of piston engine that has one more limitation than the piston engine; its piston is made of ceramic. In this case, the object representing the ceramic piston engine is called a derived object, and it inherits all of the aspects of the object representing the piston engine and adds further limitation(s) or detail to it. The object representing the ceramic piston engine "depends from" the object representing the piston engine. The relationship between these objects is called inheritance.

When the object or class representing the ceramic piston engine inherits all of the aspects of the objects representing the piston engine, it inherits the thermal characteristics of a standard piston defined in the piston engine class. However, the ceramic piston engine object overrides these ceramic specific thermal characteristics, which are typically different from those associated with a metal piston. It skips over the original and uses new functions related to ceramic pistons. Different kinds of piston engines have different characteristics, but may have the same underlying functions associated with it (e.g., how many pistons in the engine, ignition sequences, and lubrication). To access each of these functions in any piston engine object, a programmer would call the same functions with the same names, but each type of piston engine may have different (e.g., overriding) implementations of functions behind the same name. This ability to hide different implementations of a function behind the same name is called polymorphism and it greatly simplifies communication among objects.

With the concepts of composition-relationship, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, an object can represent just about anything in the real world. In fact, our logical perception of the reality is perhaps the only theoretical limit on determining the kinds of things that can become objects in object-oriented software. Some typical categories are as follows:

Objects can represent physical objects, such as automobiles in a traffic-flow simulation, electrical components in a circuit-design program, countries in an economics model, or aircraft in an air-traffic-control system.

Objects can represent elements of the computer-user environment such as windows, menus, or graphics objects.

An object can represent an inventory such as a personnel file or a table of the latitudes and longitudes of cities.

An object can represent user-defined data types such as time, angles, and complex numbers, or points on the plane.

With this enormous capability of an object to represent just about any logically separable matters, OOP allows the software developer to design and implement a computer program that is a model of some aspects of reality, whether that reality is an article of manufacture, a machine (e.g., a system), a process, or a composition of matter.

Moreover, because the object can represent anything, the software developer can create an object that can be used as a component in a larger software project in the future. For example, if 90% of a new OOP software program consists of proven, existing components made from preexisting reusable objects, then only the remaining 10% of the new software project has to be written and tested from scratch. Because 90% already came from an inventory of extensively tested, reusable objects, the potential domain from which an error could originate is 10% of the program (assuming errors do not arise from integrating the new objects with the reusable objects). As a result, OOP enables software developers to build objects out of other, previously built, objects.

This process of manufacturing OOP technology closely resembles complex machinery being built out of assemblies and sub-assemblies. Therefore, OOP technology makes software engineering more like hardware engineering in that software is built from existing components, which are available to the developer as objects. All this adds up to an improved quality of the software as well as an increased speed of software development.

Programming languages are beginning to fully support the OOP principles, such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and composition-relationship. With the advent of the well-known C++ language, many commercial software developers have embraced OOP. C++ is an OOP language that offers a fast, machine-executable code (i.e., after compilation of the C++ source code). Furthermore, C++ is suitable for both commercial-application projects and systems-programming projects. For now, C++ appears to be the most popular choice among many OOP programmers, but there is a host of other well-known OOP languages, such as Smalltalk, common lisp object system (CLOS), and Eiffel. Additionally, OOP capabilities are being added to more traditional, popular computer programming languages such as Pascal.

The benefits of object classes can be summarized, as follows:

Objects and their corresponding classes break down complex programming problems into many smaller, simpler problems.

Encapsulation enforces data abstraction through the organization of data into small, independent objects that can communicate with each other. Encapsulation protects the data in an object from accidental damage, but allows other objects to interact with that data by calling the object's member functions and structures.

Subclassing and inheritance make it possible to extend and modify objects through deriving new kinds of objects from the standard classes available in the system. Thus, new capabilities are created without having to start from scratch.

Polymorphism and multiple inheritance make it possible for different programmers to mix and match characteristics of many different classes and create specialized objects that can still work with related objects in predictable ways.

Class hierarchies and containment hierarchies provide a flexible mechanism for modeling real-world objects and the relationships among them.

Libraries of reusable classes are useful in many situations, but they also have some limitations. For example:

Complexity. In a complex system, the class hierarchies for related classes can become extremely confusing with many dozens or even hundreds of classes.

Flow of control. A program written with the aid of class libraries is still responsible for the flow of control (i.e., it must control the interactions among all the objects created from a particular library). The programmer has to decide which functions to call at what times for which kinds of objects.

Duplication of effort. Although class libraries allow programmers to use and reuse many small pieces of code, each programmer puts those pieces together in a different way. Two different programmers can use the same set of class libraries to write two programs that do exactly the same thing but whose internal structure (i.e., design) may be quite different, depending on hundreds of small decisions each programmer makes along the way. Inevitably, similar pieces of code end up doing similar things in slightly different ways and do not work as well together as they should.

Class libraries are very flexible. As programs grow more complex, more programmers are forced to reinvent basic solutions to basic problems over and over again. A relatively new extension of the class library concept is to have a framework of class libraries. This framework is more complex and consists of significant collections of collaborating classes that capture both the small scale patterns and major mechanisms that implement the common requirements and design in a specific application domain. They were first developed to free application programmers from the chores involved in displaying menus, windows, dialog boxes, and other standard graphical user interface elements for personal computers.

Frameworks also represent a change in the way programmers think about the interaction between the code they write and code written by others. In the early days of procedural programming, the programmer called libraries provided by the operating system to perform certain tasks, but basically the program executed down the page from start to finish, and the programmer was solely responsible for the flow of control. This was appropriate for printing out paychecks, calculating a mathematical table, or solving other problems with a program that executed in just one way.

The development of graphical user interfaces began to turn this procedural programming arrangement inside out. These interfaces allow the user, rather than program logic, to drive the program and decide when certain actions should be performed. Today, most personal computer software accomplishes this by means of an event loop which monitors the mouse, keyboard, and other sources of external events and calls the appropriate parts of the programmer's code according to actions that the user performs. The programmer no longer determines the order in which events occur. Instead, a program is divided into separate pieces that are called at unpredictable times and in an unpredictable order. By relinquishing control in this way to users, the developer creates a program that is much easier to use. Nevertheless, individual pieces of the program written by the developer still call libraries provided by the operating system to accomplish certain tasks, and the programmer must still determine the flow of control within each piece after it is called by the event loop. Application code still "sits on top of" the system.

Even event loop programs require programmers to write a lot of code that should not need to be written separately for every application. The concept of an application framework carries the event loop concept further. Instead of dealing with all the nuts and bolts of constructing basic menus, windows, and dialog boxes and then making these things all work together, programmers using application frameworks start with working application code and basic user interface elements in place. Subsequently, they build from there by replacing some of the generic capabilities of the framework with the specific capabilities of the intended application.

Application frameworks reduce the total amount of code that a programmer has to write from scratch. However, because the framework is really a generic application that displays windows, supports copy and paste, and so on, the programmer can also relinquish control to a greater degree than event loop programs permit. The framework code takes care of almost all event handling and flow of control, and the programmer's code is called only when the framework needs it (e.g., to create or manipulate a proprietary data structure).

A programmer writing a framework program not only relinquishes control to the user (as is also true for event loop programs), but also relinquishes the detailed flow of control within the program to the framework. This approach allows the creation of more complex systems that work together in interesting ways, as opposed to isolated programs, having custom code, being created over and over again for similar problems.

Thus, a framework basically is a collection of cooperating classes that make up a reusable design solution for a given problem domain. It typically includes objects that provide default behavior (e.g., for menus and windows), and programmers use it by inheriting some of that default behavior and overriding other behavior so that the framework calls application code at the appropriate times.

There are three main differences between frameworks and class libraries:

Behavior versus protocol. Class libraries are essentially collections of behaviors that you can call when you want those individual behaviors in your program. A framework, on the other hand, provides not only behavior but also the protocol or set of rules that govern the ways in which behaviors can be combined, including rules for what a programmer is supposed to provide versus what the framework provides.

Call versus override. With a class library, the programmer writes code that instantiates objects and calls their member functions. Its possible to instantiate and call objects in the same way with a framework (i.e., to treat the framework as a class library), but to take full advantage of a framework's reusable design, a programmer typically writes code that overrides and is called by the framework. The framework manages the flow of control among its objects. Writing a program involves dividing responsibilities among the various pieces of software that are called by the framework rather than specifying how the different pieces should work together.

Implementation versus design. With class libraries, programmers reuse only implementations, whereas with frameworks, they reuse design. A framework embodies the way a family of related programs or pieces of software work. It represents a generic design solution that can be adapted to a variety of specific problems in a given domain. For example, a single framework can embody the way a user interface works, even though two different user interfaces created with the same framework might solve quite different interface problems.

Thus, through the development of frameworks for solutions to various problems and programming tasks, significant reductions in the design and development effort for software can be achieved.

A preferred embodiment of the invention utilizes the well-known HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to implement documents on the Internet together with a general-purpose secure communication protocol for a transport medium between the client and the merchant. One skilled in the art readily recognizes that HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) or other protocols could be readily substituted for HTML without undue experimentation. Information on these products is available in T. Berners-Lee, D. Connoly, "RFC 1866: Hypertext Markup Language--2.0" (November 1995), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety; and R. Fielding, H, Frystyk, T. Berners-Lee, J. Gettys, and J. C. Mogul, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol--HTTP/1.1: HTTP Working Group Internet Draft" (May 2, 1996), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. HTML is a well-known data format used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of domains. HTML has been in use by the World-Wide Web (WWW) global information initiative since about 1990. HTML is an application of ISO Standard 8879:1986 Information Processing Text and Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

To date, Web development tools have been limited in their ability to create dynamic Web applications which span from client to server and interoperate with existing computing resources. Until recently, HTML has been the dominant technology used in development of Web-based solutions. However, HTML has proven to be inadequate in the following areas:

Poor performance;

Restricted user interface capabilities;

Can only produce static Web pages;

Lack of interoperability with existing applications and data; and

Inability to scale.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s well-known Java.TM. programming language solves many of the client-side problems by:

Improving performance on the client side;

Enabling the creation of dynamic, real-time Web applications; and

Providing the ability to create a wide variety of user interface components.

With Java.TM., developers can create robust User Interface (UI) components. For example, custom "widgets" (e.g., real-time stock tickers and animated icons) can be created and client-side performance is improved. Unlike HTML, Java.TM. supports the notion of client-side validation and offloading appropriate processing onto the client for improved performance. Accordingly, using Java.TM., dynamic, real-time Web pages can be created. Moreover, using the above-mentioned custom UI components, dynamic Web pages can also be created.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Java.TM. programming language has emerged as an industry-recognized language for "programming the Internet." Sun defines Java.TM. as follows: a simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multi-threaded, dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language. Java.TM. supports programming for the Internet in the form of platform-independent Java.TM. applets. Java.TM. applets are small, specialized applications that comply with Sun's Java.TM. Application Programming Interface (API) allowing developers to add "interactive content" to Web documents (e.g., simple animations, page adornments, and basic games). Applets execute within a Java.TM.-compatible browser (e.g., Netscape Navigator) by copying code from the server to client. From a language standpoint, a core feature set of Java.TM. is based on C++. Sun's Java.TM. literature states that Java.TM. is basically C++ with extensions from Objective C for more dynamic method resolution.

Another technology that provides functions similar to Java.TM. is provided by Microsoft and ActiveX Technologies to give developers and Web designers the wherewithal to build dynamic content for the Internet and personal computers. ActiveX includes tools for developing animation, 3-D virtual reality, video, and other multimedia content. The tools use Internet standards, work on multiple platforms, and are being supported by over 100 companies. The group's building blocks are called ActiveX Controls, which are small, fast components that enable developers to embed parts of software in HTML pages. ActiveX Controls work with a variety of programming languages including Microsoft Visual C++, Borland Delphi, Microsoft Visual Basic programming system and, in the future, Microsoft's development tool for Java.TM., code-named "Jakarta." ActiveX Technologies also includes ActiveX Server Framework, allowing developers to create server applications. One of ordinary skill in the art readily recognizes that ActiveX or other technologies could be substituted for Java.TM. without undue experimentation to practice the invention.

FIG. 1B depicts an overview in accordance with a preferred embodiment. A customer computer system 120 is in communication with a merchant computer system 130. A customer-merchant session 150 operates under a general-purpose secure communication protocol such as the SSL protocol. Merchant computer system 130 is additionally in communication with a payment gateway computer system 140. Payment gateway computer system 140 is a system that provides electronic commerce services to support a financial institution such as a bank and that interfaces to the financial institution to support the authorization and capture of transactions. A customer-institution session 170 operates under a variant of a secure payment technology such as the SET protocol, as described herein, referred to as Merchant-Originated Secure Electronic Transactions ("MOSET"), as is more fully described herein.

CERTIFICATE PROCESSING

Merchants generally require a mechanism for verifying legitimate cardholders of valid, branded bankcard account numbers. A preferred embodiment utilizes technology to link a cardholder to a specific bankcard account number and reduce the incidence of fraud and thereby the overall cost of payment processing. Payment processing includes a mechanism that allows for cardholder confirmation that a merchant has a relationship with a financial institution allowing it to accept bankcard payments. Cardholders should also be provided with a way to identify merchants with whom they can securely conduct electronic commerce. Merchant authentication is ensured by the use of digital signatures and merchant certificates.

In a preferred embodiment, a holder of a payment instrument (cardholder) surfs (browses WWW sites) the WWW (Internet) for required items. This is typically accomplished by using a browser to view on-line catalog information on the merchant's WWW page. However, order numbers can also be selected from paper catalogs or a CD-ROM and entered manually into the system. This method allows a cardholder to select the items to be purchased either automatically or manually. Then, the cardholder is presented with an order form containing the list of items, their prices, and totals. The totals could include, for example, shipping, handling, and taxes. The order form is delivered electronically from the merchant's server or created on the cardholder's computer by electronic shopping software. An alternative embodiment supports a negotiation for goods by presenting frequent shopper identification and information about a competitor's prices.

Once the price of goods sold and the payment option(s) have been selected, the merchant submits a completed order and the payment instruction. The order and payment instructions are digitally signed by cardholders who possess certificates. The merchant then requests payment authorization from the cardholder's financial institution. Then, the merchant sends confirmation of the order and eventually ships the requested goods or performs the requested services. The merchant also requests payment from the cardholder's financial institution.

FIG. 1C is a block diagram of a payment processing system in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The Certificate Issuance 162 resides at a bank web site 182. It is utilized for issuing SET-complaint, X.500 certificates to consumers. The implementation of this system may vary from one bank to another. However, the system gathers a consumer's personal information, and after processing the information, the system issues a certificate along with a payment instrument to the consumer.

A Single Account Wallet 160 at bank web site 182 represents the MIME message that is created by the Certificate Issuance system. This MIME message contains a VeriFone wallet. The VeriFone wallet contains a single payment instrument and the certificate associated with it. For security reasons, the private key is not included in the wallet. The consumer has to specify a private key before using the instrument for payment. When the consumer is issued the certificate, this MIME message is sent to a browser, which resides at a consumer desktop 186. The browser launches a Certificate Installation application 174, 144, which is defined as a helper application in the browser. The Certificate Installation application 174, 144 reads the MIME message and installs a wallet into a wallet database 158.

Various helper applications 188, 172, 174, 176 are provided to make the consumer's shopping experience easy and efficient. A Paywindow helper application 188 is utilized by the consumer to authorize the payment to the merchant, to administer their wallets, to review their previously completed payment transactions, and to perform housekeeping activities on the wallets. This application is defined as a `helper` application on the consumer's desktop. The browser launches this application when the merchant system sends a MIME message requesting payment.

PayWindow Setup Helper application 172 is used by the consumer to install helper applications and other modules from the web site onto the consumer desktop. When a consumer attempts to install an application for a first time, the consumer does not have a helper application on the desktop. Thus, the first time installation of an application requires a consumer to perform two steps. First, the user downloads the system package to their desktop, and then the user runs setup to decompress and install the system. Thereafter, whenever the consumer gets a new release of system software, the browser launches this helper application, which in turn installs the appropriate other system modules.

Certificate Installation Helper Application 174 is utilized to install a wallet that is issued by a bank. When the bank's certificate issuance web system sends the MIME message containing the VeriFone wallet, the browser launches this application. This application queries a consumer to determine if the payment instrument contained in the wallet is to be copied to an existing wallet or to be kept in the new wallet. This application then installs the payment instrument and the certificate into wallet database 158.

Certificate Issuance CGI scripts 162 and Single Account Wallet 160 at Bank Web Site 182 is processed as described in the native system. The Certificate Installation Applet of Bank Web Site 182 is utilized by the Certificate Issuance CGI scripts 162 system to deliver a consumer's certificate to the consumer's desktop.

CUSTOMER-TO-MERCHANT COMMUNICATION

FIG. 2 depicts a more detailed view of customer computer system 120 in communication with merchant system 130 using customer-merchant session 150 operating under the SSL protocol (as documented in Freier (cited and incorporated by reference above)) in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Customer computer system 120 initiates communication with merchant computer system 130 using any well-known access protocol (e.g., Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol ("TCP/IP")). A description of TCP/IP is provided in Information Sciences Institute, "Transmission Control Protocol DARPA Internet Program Protocol Specification (RFC 793)" (September, 1981), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, and Information Sciences Institute, "Internet Protocol DARPA Internet Program Protocol Specification (RFC 791)" (September, 1981), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. In this implementation, customer computer system 120 acts as a client and merchant computer system 130 acts as a server.

Customer computer system 120 initiates communication by sending a "client hello" message 210 to merchant computer system 130. When a client first connects to a server it sends client hello message 210 as its first message. The client can also send client hello message 210 in response to a hello request on its own initiative in order to renegotiate the security parameters in an existing connection. Client hello message 210 includes a random structure, which is used later in the protocol. Specifically, the random structure includes the current time and date in standard UNIX 32-bit format according to the sender's internal clock and twenty-eight bytes of data generated by a secure random number generator. Client hello message 210 further includes a variable length session identifier. If not empty, the session identifier value identifies a session between the same client and server whose security parameters the client wishes to reuse. The session identifier may be from an earlier connection, the current connection, or another currently active connection. For example, it is useful to specify the current connection if the client only wishes to update the random structures and derived values of a connection, and it is useful to specify another currently active connection if the client wishes to establish several simultaneous independent secure connections to the same server without repeating the full handshake protocol. Client hello message 210 further includes an indicator of the cryptographic algorithms supported by the client in order of the client's preference (i.e., ordered according to client preference).

In response to client hello message 210, if merchant computer system 130 wishes to correspond with customer computer system 120, then it responds with a server hello message 215. If merchant computer system 130 does not wish to communicate with customer computer system 120, then it responds with a message, which is not shown, indicating refusal to communicate.

Server hello message 215 includes a random structure, which is used later in the protocol. The random structure in server hello message 215 is in the same format as, but has contents independent of, the random structure in client hello message 210. Specifically, the random structure includes the current time and date in standard UNIX 32-bit format according to the sender's internal clock and twenty-eight bytes of data generated by a secure random number generator. Server hello message 215 further includes a variable length session identifier. The session identifier value identifies a new or existing session between the same client and server. Server hello message 215 further includes an indicator of the cryptographic algorithms selected from among the algorithms specified by client hello message 210, which is utilized in further encrypted communications.

Optionally, merchant computer system 130 transmits a server certificate 220. If transmitted then, server certificate 220 enables customer computer system 120 to authenticate the identity of merchant computer system 130.

If merchant computer system 130 does not transmit server certificate 220, or if server certificate 220 is suitable only for authentication, then merchant computer system 130 optionally transmits a server key exchange message 225. Server key exchange message 225 identifies a key that can be used by customer computer system 120 to decrypt further messages sent by merchant computer system 130.

After transmitting server hello message 215, and optionally transmitting server certificate 220 or server key exchange message 225 or both, merchant computer system 130 transmits a server hello done message 230 and waits for a further response from customer computer system 120.

Customer computer system 120 optionally transmits a client certificate 240 to merchant computer system 130. If transmitted, then client certificate 240 enables merchant computer system 130 to authenticate the identity of customer computer system 120. Alternatively, customer computer system 120 may transmit a no-client-certificate alert 245 to indicate that the customer has not registered with any certification authority.

If customer computer system 120 does not transmit client certificate 240, or if client certificate 240 is suitable only for authentication, then customer computer system 120 optionally transmits a client key exchange message 250. Client key exchange message 250 identifies a key that may be used by merchant computer system 130 to decrypt further messages sent by customer computer system 120.

After optionally transmitting client certificate 240, and no-client-certificate alert 245 or client key exchange message 250 or both, customer computer system 120 transmits a finished message 260.

At this point, customer computer system 120 and merchant computer system 130 have performed the following operations:

1) negotiated an encryption scheme that can be commonly employed in further communications, and

2) communicated to each other a set of encryption keys that can be used to decrypt further communications between the two computer systems.

Customer computer system 120 and merchant computer system 130 can thereafter engage in secure communications 270 with less risk of interception by third parties.

Among the messages communicated by customer computer system 120 to merchant computer system 130 may be messages that specify goods or services to be ordered and payment information, such as a credit card number and related information, collectively referred to as "payment information," that can be used to pay for the goods or the services (or both) ordered. In order to obtain payment, the merchant supplies this information to the bank or other payment gateway responsible for the proffered payment method. This enables the merchant to perform payment authorization and payment capture.

Payment authorization is a process by which permission is granted by a payment gateway operating on behalf of a financial institution to authorize payment on behalf of the financial institution. In one embodiment, payment authorization is a process that assesses transaction risk, confirms that a given transaction does not raise the account holder's debt above the account's credit limit, and reserves the specified amount of credit; and payment capture is a process that triggers the movement of funds from the financial institution to the merchant's account after settlement of the account.

PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION

Merchants generally utilize point-of-sale (POS) products for credit and debit transactions on a daily basis. However, handling Internet transactions is destined to become a necessary function for every payment processing system. Today, merchants often transmit data received over the Internet inefficiently. Some fax the information or waste time keying data into a non-Internet system.

An embodiment in accordance with the present invention allows an acquirer processor to accept transactions from Internet storefronts (e.g., Web sites that offer goods or services or both for sale) without altering a current host environment. The system converts payment protocol messages and simultaneously manages transactions from a number of Internet merchant servers. As the number of transactions grows, the payment gateway can be cost-effectively and efficiently scaled to handle the increased business, and the payment gateway can be configured to work with specific business processes used by the acquirer. Thus, the payment gateway supports Internet processing utilizing payment processing operations.

Accordingly, the payment gateway provides support for configuring and installing the Internet payment capability utilizing existing host POS technology. The payment gateway also provides an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) with support built-in to accommodate future payment instruments such as debit cards, electronic checks, electronic cash, and micropayments. The payment gateway implements secure transactions using the well-known RSA (Rivest Shamir Adleman) public-key cryptography system and the well-known MasterCard/Visa Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol. The gateway also provides full functionality for merchant payment processing including authorization, capture, settlement, and reconciliation while providing monitor activity with reporting and tracking of transactions sent over the Internet. Finally, the payment gateway also implements Internet payment procedures that match current processor business models to ensure consistency for merchants.

FIG. 3 depicts an overview of the method of securely supplying payment information to a payment gateway in order to obtain payment authorization in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 310, merchant computer system 130 generates a payment authorization request 315 and transmits it to payment gateway computer system 140. In function block 330, payment gateway system 140 processes payment authorization request 315, generates a payment authorization response 325, and transmits it to merchant computer system 130. In function block 320, merchant computer system 130 processes payment authorization response 325 and determines whether payment for the goods or the services (or both) sought to be obtained by the customer has been authorized.

PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION REQUEST GENERATION

FIG. 4 depicts the stages of generating and transmitting a payment authorization request in accordance with a preferred embodiment. FIGS. 5A through 5F depict views of the payment authorization request and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 410, merchant computer system 130 creates a basic authorization request 510. Basic authorization request 510 is a data area that includes information for determining whether a request should be granted or denied. Specifically, it includes such information as the party who is being charged, the amount to be charged, the account number of the account to be charged, and any additional data, such as passwords, needed to validate the charge. This information is either calculated based upon prior customer merchandise selection or provided by the customer over secure link 270 established in the customer-merchant general-purpose secure communication protocol session. FIG. 5A depicts basic authorization request 510 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 420, merchant computer system 130 combines basic authorization request 510, a copy of its encryption public key certificate 515, and a copy of its signature public key certificate 520. Merchant computer system 130 calculates a digital signature 525 for the combined contents of a combined block 530 including basic authorization request 510, encryption public key certificate 515, and signature public key certificate 520, and appends it to the combination of the combined basic authorization request 510, encryption public key certificate 515, and signature public key certificate 520. Merchant computer system 130 calculates digital signature 525 by first calculating a "message digest" based upon the contents of the combined basic authorization request 510, encryption public key certificate 515, and signature public key certificate 520. A message digest is the fixed-length result that is generated when a variable length message is fed into a one-way hashing function. Message digests help verify that a message has not been altered because altering the message would change the digest. The message digest is then encrypted using merchant computer system's 130 digital signature private key, thus forming a digital signature. FIG. 5B depicts combined block 530 formed by function block 420 and including basic authorization request 510, encryption public key certificate 515, signature public key certificate 520, and digital signature 525, in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 430, merchant computer system 130 generates a random encryption key RK-0 540. Random encryption key RK-0 540 is a symmetric encryption key. A symmetric encryption key is a key characterized by the property that a message encrypted with a symmetric key can be decrypted with that same key, which is unlike an asymmetric key pair, such as a public-key/private-key key pair, in which a message encrypted with one key of the key pair may only be decrypted with the other key of the same key pair. FIG. 5C depicts random encryption key RK-0 540 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 440, merchant computer system 130 encrypts combined block 530 using random encryption key RK-0 540 to form an encrypted combined block 550. FIG. 5D depicts encrypted combined block 550 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted combined block 550 is graphically shown by a random key lock 555, which indicates that encrypted combined block 550 is encrypted using random key RK-0 540.

In function block 450, merchant computer system 130 encrypts random key RK-0 540 using the public key of payment gateway system 140 to form an encrypted random key 560. FIG. 5E depicts encrypted random key 560 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted random key 560 is graphically shown by a payment gateway public key lock 565, which indicates that encrypted random key 560 is encrypted using the public key of payment gateway system 140.

In function block 460, merchant computer system 130 concatenates encrypted combined block 550 and encrypted random key 560 to form merchant authorization request 315. FIG. 5F depicts merchant authorization request 315 including encrypted combined block 550 and encrypted random key 560 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 470, merchant computer system 130 transmits merchant authorization request 315 to payment gateway system 140.

PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION REQUEST PROCESSING

FIGS. 6A and 6B depict the stages of processing a payment authorization request and generating and transmitting a payment authorization request response in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Function blocks 610 through 630 depict the stages of processing a payment authorization request, and function blocks 635 through 685 depict the stages of generating and transmitting a payment authorization request response.

In function block 610, payment gateway computer system 140 applies its private key to encrypted random key 560 contained within received merchant authorization request 315, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of random key RK-0 540. In function block 615, payment gateway computer system 140 applies random key RK-0 540 to encrypted combined block 550, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of combined block 530. Combined block 530 includes basic authorization request 510, a copy of merchant computer system's 130 encryption public key certificate 515, and a copy of merchant computer system's 130 signature public key certificate 520, as well as merchant digital signature 525.

In function block 620, payment gateway computer system 140 verifies merchant computer system's 130 encryption public key certificate 515 and merchant computer system's 130 signature public key certificate 520. Payment gateway computer system 140 performs this verification by making a call to the certification authorities associated with each certificate. If verification of either certificate fails, then payment gateway computer system 140 rejects the authorization request.

In function block 625, payment gateway computer system 140 validates merchant digital signature 525. Payment gateway computer system 140 performs this validation by calculating a message digest over the contents of the combined basic authorization request 510, encryption public key certificate 515, and signature public key certificate 520. Payment gateway computer system 140 then decrypts digital signature 525 to obtain a copy of the equivalent message digest calculated by merchant computer system 130 in function block 420. If the two message digests are equal, then the digital signature 525 is validated. If validation fails, then payment gateway computer system 140 rejects the authorization request.

In function block 630, payment gateway computer system 140 determines the financial institution for which authorization is required by inspection of basic authorization request 510. Payment gateway computer system 140 contacts the appropriate financial institution using a secure means (e.g., a direct-dial modem-to-modem connection or a proprietary internal network that is not accessible to third parties), and using prior art means, obtains a response indicating whether the requested payment is authorized.

PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION RESPONSE GENERATION

Function blocks 635 through 685 depict the stages of generating and transmitting a payment authorization request response. FIGS. 7A through 7J depict views of the payment authorization response and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 635, payment gateway computer system 140 creates a basic authorization response 710. Basic authorization response 710 is a data area that includes information for determining whether a request was granted or denied. FIG. 7A depicts basic authorization response 710 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 640, payment gateway computer system 140 combines basic authorization response 710 and a copy of its signature public key certificate 720. Payment gateway computer system 140 calculates a digital signature 725 for the combined contents of combined block 730 that includes basic authorization response 710 and signature public key certificate 720, and appends the signature to the combination of the combined basic authorization response 710 and signature public key certificate 720. Payment gateway computer system 140 calculates digital signature 725 by first calculating a message digest based on the contents of the combined basic authorization response 710 and signature public key certificate 720. The message digest is then encrypted using merchant computer system's 140 digital signature private key, thus forming a digital signature. FIG. 7B depicts combined block 730 formed in function block 640 and containing basic authorization response 710, the signature public key certificate 720, and digital signature 725 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 645, payment gateway computer system 140 generates a first symmetric random encryption key RK-1 740. FIG. 7C depicts random encryption key RK-1 740 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 650, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts combined block 730 using random encryption key RK-1 740 to form an encrypted combined block 750. FIG. 7D depicts encrypted combined block 750 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted combined block 750 is graphically shown by a random key lock 755, which indicates that encrypted combined block 750 is encrypted using random encryption key RK-1 740.

In function block 655, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts random encryption key RK-1 740 using the public key of merchant computer system 130 to form an encrypted random key RK-760. FIG. 7E depicts encrypted random key RK-1 760 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted random key RK-1 760 is graphically shown by a merchant public key lock 765, which indicates that encrypted random key RK-1 760 is encrypted using the merchant public key.

In function block 660, payment gateway computer system 140 generates a random capture token 770. Random capture token 770 is utilized in subsequent payment capture processing to associate the payment capture request with the payment authorization request being processed. FIG. 7F depicts random capture token 770 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 665, payment gateway computer system 140 generates a second symmetric random encryption key RK-2 775. FIG. 7G depicts second random encryption key RK-2 775 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 670, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts capture token 770 using random encryption key RK-2 775 to form an encrypted capture token 780. FIG. 7H depicts encrypted capture token 780 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted capture token 780 is graphically shown by a random key lock 785, which indicates that encrypted capture token 780 is encrypted using random key RK-2 775.

In function block 675, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts second random encryption key RK-2 775 using its own public key to form an encrypted random key RK-2 790 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. FIG. 7I depicts encrypted random key RK-2 790. The encryption state of encrypted random key 790 is graphically shown by a payment gateway public key lock 795, which indicates that encrypted random key 790 is encrypted using the payment gateway public key.

In function block 680, payment gateway computer system 140 concatenates encrypted combined block 750, encrypted random key RK-1 760, encrypted capture token 780, and encrypted random key RK-2 790 to form merchant authorization response 325. FIG. 7J depicts merchant authorization response 325 including encrypted combined block 750, encrypted random key RK-1 760, encrypted capture token 780, and encrypted random key RK-2 790 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 685, payment gateway computer system 140 transmits merchant authorization response 325 to merchant system 130.

PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION RESPONSE PROCESSING

FIG. 8 depicts the stages of processing a payment authorization response in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 810, merchant computer system 130 applies its private key to encrypted random key RK-1 760 contained within received merchant authorization response 325, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of random key RK-1 740. In function block 820, merchant computer system 130 applies random key RK-1 740 to encrypted combined block 750, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of combined block 730. Combined block 730 includes basic authorization response 710, a copy of payment gateway computer system's 140 signature public key certificate 720, as well as payment gateway digital signature 725.

In function block 830, merchant computer system 130 verifies payment gateway computer system's 140 signature public key certificate 720. Merchant computer system 130 performs this verification by making a call to the certification authority associated with the certificate. If verification of the certificate fails, then merchant computer system 130 concludes that the authorization response is counterfeit and treats it as though the authorization request had been rejected.

In function block 840, merchant computer system 130 validates payment gateway digital signature 725. Merchant computer system 130 performs this validation by calculating a message digest over the contents of combined basic authorization request 710 and signature public key certificate 720. Merchant computer system 130 then decrypts digital signature 725 to obtain a copy of the equivalent message digest calculated by payment gateway computer system 140 in function block 640. If the two message digests are equal, then digital signature 725 is validated. If validation fails, then merchant computer system 130 concludes that the authorization response is counterfeit and treats it as though the authorization request had been rejected.

In function block 850, merchant computer system 130 stores encrypted capture token 780 and encrypted random key RK-2 790 for later use in payment capture.

In function block 860, merchant computer system 130 processes the customer purchase request in accordance with authorization response 710. If authorization response 710 indicates that payment is authorized, then merchant computer system 130 fills the requested order. If the authorization response indicates that payment is not authorized, or if merchant computer system 130 determined in function block 830 or function block 840 that the authorization response is counterfeit, then merchant computer system 130 indicates to the customer that the order cannot be filled.

PAYMENT CAPTURE

FIG. 9 depicts an overview of the method of securely supplying payment capture information to payment gateway computer system 140 in order to obtain payment capture in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 910, merchant computer system 130 generates a merchant payment capture request 915 and transmits it to payment gateway computer system 140. In function block 930, payment gateway computer system 140 processes payment capture request 915, generates a payment capture response 925, and transmits it to merchant computer system 130. In function block 920, merchant computer system 130 processes payment capture response 925 and verifies that payment for the goods or the services (or both) sought to be obtained by the customer have been captured.

PAYMENT CAPTURE REQUEST GENERATION

FIG. 10 depicts the stages of generating and transmitting a payment capture request in accordance with a preferred embodiment. FIGS. 11A through 11F depict views of the payment capture request and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 1010, merchant computer system 130 creates a basic capture request 1110. Basic capture request 1110 is a data area that includes information needed by payment gateway computer system 140 to trigger a transfer of funds to the merchant operating merchant computer system 130. Specifically, basic capture request 1110 includes a capture request amount, a capture token, a date, summary information of the purchased items, and a Merchant ID (MID) for the particular merchant. FIG. 11A depicts basic capture request 1110 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1020, merchant computer system 130 combines basic capture request 1110, a copy of its encryption public key certificate 1115, and a copy of its signature public key certificate 1120. Merchant computer system 130 calculates a digital signature 1125 for the combined contents of the combined block 1130 including basic capture request 1110, encryption public key certificate 1115, and signature public key certificate 1120, and appends it to the combination of the combined basic capture request 1110, encryption public key certificate 1115, and signature public key certificate 1120. Merchant computer system 130 calculates digital signature 1125 by first calculating a message digest over the contents of the combined basic capture request 1110, encryption public key certificate 1115, and signature public key certificate 1120. The message digest is then encrypted using merchant computer system's 130 digital signature private key, thus forming a digital signature. FIG. 11B depicts combined block 1130 formed by function block 1020 and including basic capture request 1110, encryption public key certificate 1115, signature public key certificate 1120, and digital signature 1125.

In function block 1030, merchant computer system 130 generates a random encryption key RK-3 1140. Random encryption key RK-3 1140 is a symmetric encryption key. FIG. 11C depicts random encryption key RK-3 1140 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1040, merchant computer system 130 encrypts combined block 1130 using random encryption key RK-3 1140 to form an encrypted combined block 1150. FIG. 11D depicts encrypted combined block 1150 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted combined block 1150 is graphically shown by a random key lock 1155, which indicates that encrypted combined block 1150 is encrypted using random key RK-3 1140.

In function block 1050, merchant computer system 130 encrypts random encryption key RK-3 1140 using the public key of payment gateway computer system 140 to form an encrypted random key 1160. FIG. 11E depicts encrypted random key 1160 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted random key 1160 is graphically shown by a payment gateway public key lock 1165, which indicates that encrypted random key RK-3 1160 is encrypted using the payment gateway public key.

In function block 1060, merchant computer system 130 concatenates encrypted combined block 1150, encrypted random key 1160, and encrypted capture token 780 and encrypted random key RK-2 790 that were stored in function block 850 to form merchant capture request 915. FIG. 11F depicts merchant capture request 915, including encrypted combined block 1150, encrypted random key 1160, encrypted capture token 780, and encrypted random key RK-2 790 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 1070, merchant computer system 130 transmits merchant capture request 915 to payment gateway computer system 140.

PAYMENT CAPTURE REQUEST PROCESSING

FIGS. 12A and 12B depict the stages of processing a payment capture request and generating and transmitting a payment capture request response in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Function blocks 1210 through 1245 depict the stages of processing a payment capture request, and function blocks 1250 through 1285 depict the stages of generating and transmitting a payment capture request response.

In function block 1210, payment gateway computer system 140 applies its private key to encrypted random key 1160 contained within received merchant capture request 915, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of random key RK-3 1140.

In function block 1215, payment gateway computer system 140 applies random key RK-3 1140 to encrypted combined block 1150, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of combined block 1130. Combined block 1130 includes basic capture request 1110, a copy of merchant computer system's 130 encryption public key certificate 1115, a copy of merchant computer system's 130 signature public key certificate 1120, and merchant digital signature 1125.

In function block 1220, payment gateway computer system 140 verifies merchant computer system's 130 encryption public key certificate 1115 and merchant computer system's 130 signature public key certificate 1120. Payment gateway computer system 140 performs this verification by making a call to the certification authorities associated with each certificate. If verification of either certificate fails, then payment gateway computer system 140 rejects the capture request.

In function block 1225, payment gateway computer system 140 validates merchant digital signature 1125. Payment gateway computer system 140 performs this validation by calculating a message digest over the contents of the combined basic capture request 1110, encryption public key certificate 1115, and signature public key certificate 1120. Payment gateway computer system 140 then decrypts digital signature 1125 to obtain a copy of the equivalent message digest calculated by merchant computer system 130 in function block 1020. If the two message digests are equal, then digital signature 1125 is validated. If validation fails, then payment gateway computer system 140 rejects the capture request.

In function block 1230, payment gateway computer system 140 applies its private key to encrypted random key RK-2 790 contained within received merchant capture request 915, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of random key RK-2 775.

In function block 1235, payment gateway computer system 140 applies random key RK-2 775 to encrypted capture token 780, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of capture token 770.

In function block 1240, payment gateway computer system 140 verifies that a proper transaction is being transmitted between capture token 770 and capture request 1110. A capture token includes data that the gateway generates at the time of authorization. When the authorization is approved, the encrypted capture token is given to the merchant for storage. At the time of capture, the merchant returns the capture token to the gateway along with other information required for capture. Upon receipt of the capture token, the gateway compares a message made of the capture request data and the capture token data and transmits this information over a traditional credit/debit network. If an improperly formatted transaction is detected, then payment gateway computer system 140 rejects the capture request.

In function block 1245, payment gateway computer system 140 determines the financial institution for which capture is requested by inspection of basic capture request 1110. Payment gateway computer system 140 contacts the appropriate financial institution using a secure means (e.g., a direct-dial modem-to-modem connection or a proprietary internal network that is not accessible to third parties), and using prior art means, instructs a computer at the financial institution to perform the requested funds transfer after settlement.

PAYMENT CAPTURE RESPONSE GENERATION

Function blocks 1250 through 1285 depict the stages of generating and transmitting a payment capture request response. FIGS. 13A through 13F depict views of the payment capture response and its component parts in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1250, payment gateway computer system 140 creates a basic capture response 1310. Basic capture response 1310 is a data area that includes information for indicating whether a capture request was granted or denied. FIG. 13A depicts basic capture response 1310 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1255, payment gateway computer system 140 combines basic capture response 1310 and a copy of its signature public key certificate 1320. Payment computer system 140 calculates a digital signature 1325 for the combined contents of combined block 1330 including basic capture response 1310 and signature public key certificate 1320, and appends digital signature 1325 to the combination of the combined basic capture response 1310 and signature public key certificate 1320. Payment gateway computer system 140 calculates digital signature 1325 by first calculating a message digest over the contents of the combined basic capture response 1310 and signature public key certificate 1320. The message digest is then encrypted using the merchant computer system's 140 digital signature private key, thus forming a digital signature. FIG. 13B depicts combined block 1330 formed by function block 1255 and including basic capture request 1310, signature public key certificate 1320, and digital signature 1325 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1260, payment gateway computer system 140 generates a symmetric random encryption key RK-4 1340. FIG. 13C depicts random encryption key RK-4 1340 in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

In function block 1270, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts combined block 1330 using random encryption key RK-4 1340 to form an encrypted combined block 1350. FIG. 13D depicts encrypted combined block 1350 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted combined block 1350 is graphically shown by a random key lock 1355, which indicates that encrypted combined block 1350 is encrypted using random key RK-4 1340.

In function block 1275, payment gateway computer system 140 encrypts random encryption key RK-4 1340 using the public key of merchant computer system 130 to form an encrypted random key RK-4 1360. FIG. 13E depicts encrypted random key RK-4 1360 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The encryption state of encrypted random key 1360 is graphically shown by a merchant public key lock 1365, which indicates that encrypted random key 1360 is encrypted using the merchant public key.

In function block 1280, payment gateway computer system 140 concatenates encrypted combined block 1350 and encrypted random key RK-4 1360 to form merchant capture response 925. FIG. 13F depicts merchant capture response 925 including encrypted combined block 1350 and encrypted random key RK-4 1360 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 1285, payment gateway computer system 140 transmits merchant capture response 925 to merchant system 130.

PAYMENT CAPTURE RESPONSE PROCESSING

FIG. 14 depicts the stages of processing a payment capture response in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In function block 1410, merchant computer system 130 applies its private key to encrypted random key RK-4 1360 contained within received merchant capture response 925, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of random key RK-4 1340.

In function block 1420, merchant computer system 130 applies random key RK-4 1340 to encrypted combined block 1350, thereby decrypting it and obtaining a cleartext version of combined block 1330. Combined block 1330 includes basic capture response 1310, a copy of payment gateway computer system's 140 signature public key certificate 1320, and payment gateway digital signature 1325.

In function block 1430, merchant computer system 130 verifies payment gateway computer system's 140 signature public key certificate 1320. Merchant computer system 130 performs this verification by making a call to the certification authority associated with the certificate. If verification of the certificate fails, then merchant computer system 130 concludes that the capture response is counterfeit and raises an error condition.

In function block 1440, merchant computer system 130 validates payment gateway digital signature 1325. Merchant computer system 130 performs this validation by calculating a message digest over the contents of the combined basic capture response 1310 and signature public key certificate 1320. Merchant computer system 130 then decrypts digital signature 1325 to obtain a copy of the equivalent message digest calculated by payment gateway computer system 140 in function block 1255. If the two message digests are equal, then digital signature 1325 is validated. If validation fails, then merchant computer system 130 concludes that the authorization response is counterfeit and raises an error condition.

In function block 1450, merchant computer system 130 stores basic capture response 1310 for later use by legacy system accounting programs (e.g., to perform reconciliation between the merchant operating merchant computer system 130 and the financial institution from whom payment was requested), thereby completing the transaction.

Accordingly, the system of the present invention permits immediate deployment of a secure payment technology architecture such as the SET architecture without first establishing a public-key encryption infrastructure for use by consumers. It thereby permits immediate use of SET-compliant transaction processing without the need for consumers to migrate to SET-compliant application software.

VIRTUAL POINT OF SALE DETAILS

A virtual Point of Sale (vPOS) Terminal Cartridge is described in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The vPOS Terminal Cartridge provides payment functionality similar to what a commercially available VeriFone POS terminal ("gray box") provides for a merchant today, but the vPOS allows a merchant to process payments securely using the Internet. It provides full payment is functionality for a variety of payment instruments.

PAYMENT FUNCTIONALITY

FIG. 15A illustrates a payment processing flow in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The payment functionality provided by the vPOS terminal is divided into two main categories: a "Consumer-Initiated" category 1500; and a "Merchant-Initiated" category 1510. Some payment transactions require communication with the acquirer bank through a gateway 1530. The normal flow of a transaction is via a vPOS Cartridge API 1512 to a vPOS C++ API 1514 into a payment protocol layer 1516, which is responsible for converting data into the appropriate format for transmission to gateway 1530 for additional processing and forwarding to existing host payment authorization systems. Host legacy format refers to an existing authorization system for credit card approval currently utilized with the VeriFone Point of Sale (POS) gray terminals. The output from payment protocol layer 1516 is transmitted to the authorization processing center via gateway 1530. These transactions are referred to as "Online Transactions" or "Host Payments." The transactions that can be done locally by the merchant without having to communicate with the acquirer bank are referred to as "Local Functions and Transactions." To support different types of payment instruments, the vPOS Terminal payment functionality is categorized as set forth below.

Host Payment Functionality: These transactions require communication with the final host, either immediately or at a later stage. For example, an Online Authorization-Only transaction, when initiated, communicates with the host immediately. However, an Off-line Authorization-Only transaction is locally authorized by the vPOS terminal without having to communicate with the host, but at a later stage this off-line authorization transaction is sent to the host. Within the Host Payment Functionality some transactions have an associated Payment Instrument, but others do not. These two kinds of transactions are:

Host Financial Payment Functionality: These transactions have a Payment Instrument (e.g., Credit Card, Debit Card, E-Cash, or E-Check) associated with them. An example of this transaction is the "Return" transaction, which is initiated upon returning merchandise to the merchant.

Host Administrative Payment Functionality: These transactions do not require a payment instrument and provide either administrative or inquiry functionality. Examples of these transactions are "Reconcile" or "Batch Close."

Local Functions and Transactions: These transactions do not require communication with the host at any stage and provide essential vPOS terminal administrative functionality. An example of this is the vPOS terminal configuration function, which is required to set up the vPOS terminal. Another example is the "vPOS Batch Review" function, which is required to review the different transactions in the vPOS Batch or the Transaction Log.

PAYMENT INSTRUMENTS

A preferred embodiment of a vPOS terminal supports various Payment Instruments. A consumer chooses a payment based on personal preferences. Some of the Payment Instruments supported include:

Credit Cards

Debit Cards

Electronic Cash

Electronic Checks

Micro-Payments (electronic coin)

Smart Cards

vPOS FUNCTIONALITY

In the block diagram shown in FIG. 15B, the vPOS provides an interface for transactions that are initiated both by the consumer and the merchant in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The merchant initiates a transaction from a Graphical User Interface (GUI) 1550 and all the transactions that are initiated by the consumer are routed by a Merchant WEB Server interface 1545.

An Authorization/Data Capture Module 1560 processes the requests originated by the merchant or the consumer and routes them to a Protocol Module 1565. Protocol Module 1565 is responsible for building a payment protocol request packet 1570 (e.g., an SSL-encapsulated ISO 8583 packet) before sending the request to a Gateway 1579. Gateway 1579 then awaits a response from Protocol Module 1565, and upon receiving the response, Gateway 1579 parses the data and provides unwrapped data to Authorization/Data Capture Module 1560. Authorization/Data Capture Module 1560 analyzes the response and updates a Transaction Log 1580. Transaction Log 1580 includes information concerning any successfully completed transactions and the accumulators or the transaction totals. The vPOS terminal creates and maintains Transaction Log 1580, and vPOS Configuration Data 1585 includes information that is used to configure. the behavior of the vPOS. The entire vPOS functionality is thread-safe and hence using the vPOS in a multi-threaded environment does not require any additional interfacing requirements.

PAYMENT FUNCTIONALITY

As discussed above, the different Payment Functionality provided by the vPOS terminal can be divided into two main categories such as "Merchant Initiated" and "Consumer Initiated." Some of these transactions require communication with the Gateway, and these transactions are referred to as "Online Transactions." Transactions that can be done locally to the merchant without having to communicate with the gateway are referred to as "Local Functions/Transactions." In order to provide support for many different types of Payment Instruments, the vPOS Payment Functionality has been categorized.

Host payment functionality and transactions require communication with the host either immediately or at a later stage. Each of the host financial payment transactions are in this category and require a Payment Instrument. These transactions can be initiated with different types of Payment Instruments, which the vPOS terminal supports in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

An authorization without capture transaction is used to validate the card holder's account number for a sale that needs to be performed at a later stage. The transaction does not confirm a sale's completion to the host, and there is no host data capture in this event. The vPOS captures this transaction record and later forwards it to the host to confirm the sale in a forced post transaction request. An authorization without capture transaction can be initiated both by the consumer and the merchant.

A forced post transaction confirms to a host computer that a completion of a sale has been accomplished and requests data capture of the transaction. The forced post transaction is used as a follow-up transaction after doing an authorization (Online or Offline) transaction. The forced post transaction can be initiated only by the merchant.

The authorization with post transaction is a combination of authorization without capture and forced post transactions. This transaction can be initiated both by the consumer and the merchant.

The offline post transaction is identical to the "authorization without capture" transaction, except that the transaction is locally captured by the vPOS without initiating communication with a host. A forced post operation is done as a follow-up operation of this transaction. This transaction can be initiated by both the consumer and the merchant.

The return transaction is used to credit the return amount electronically to the consumer's account when purchased merchandise is returned. The vPOS captures the return transaction record when the merchandise is returned, and this transaction can be initiated only by the merchant.

The void transaction cancels a previously completed draft capture transaction. The vPOS GUI provides an interface for retrieving a transaction record required to be voided from the batch and passes it to the Authorization/Data Capture module after confirmation. The batch record is updated to reflect the voided transaction after getting an approval from the Gateway. This transaction can be initiated only by the merchant.

The pre-authorization transaction is identical to the authorization without capture transaction, but the consumers' "open-to-buy" amount is reduced by the pre-authorization amount. An example of this type of transaction is the "check-in" transaction in a hotel environment. A check-in transaction sends a pre-authorization request to the host so that an amount required for the customers' stay in the hotel is reserved. The pre-authorization transaction is followed by a pre-authorization complete transaction. This transaction can be initiated both by the consumer and the merchant.

The pre-authorization complete transaction is done as a follow-up to the pre-authorization transaction. This transaction informs the host of the actual transaction amount. The pre-authorization complete transaction amount could be more or less than the pre-authorization amount. An example is the "check-out" transaction in a hotel environment. The check-out amount can be less than or more than the check-in amount. This transaction can only be initiated by a merchant.

The adjust transaction is initiated to make a correction to the amount of a previously completed transaction. The adjust transaction can be initiated only by the merchant.

The host administrative transactions do not require any payment instrument. The balance inquiry transaction is used for on-line inquiry into the balance of the merchant's account. The batch data or the configuration data is not affected by this transaction.

The reconciliation or close transaction is processed at the end of the day to start the settlement process for the transactions captured by the host for that particular vPOS.

The host log-on transaction is an administrative transaction that is used to synchronize the vPOS with the host at the start of the day and also initiate a fresh batch at the vPOS terminal.

The parameters download transaction is used to download the vPOS configuration information from the host and set-up the vPOS in the event of any change in the configuration data. A test transaction is used to detect the presence of a host and the status of a link from the vPOS to the host.

Local transactions or functions are initiated by a merchant and do not require communication with the Gateway. These transactions can only be initiated by a merchant. The totals or accumulators review is a local information inquiry function and is used to retrieve the local (merchant's) totals. The detail transaction or the batch review function is used to retrieve all the records from the transaction log or the batch. The clear batch function is used to start a fresh batch. This transaction is utilized to electronically reconcile the vPOS with the host and to manually reconcile the vPOS with the host. After completing the manual reconciliation processing, the merchant can initiate this transaction to start a fresh batch. The clear accumulator function is similar to the clear batch functionality and resets all vPOS terminal accumulators to zero. This function is required when the merchant is not able to reconcile the vPOS with the host electronically.

The vPOS unlock or start transaction is a local function used to start the vPOS at the start of the day. The vPOS lock or stop function is used to lock or stop the vPOS from accepting any transactions. The vPOS configuration setup function is used to setup the vPOS configuration data. The vPOS configuration data is divided into different tables, for example, the Card/Issuer Definition Table (CDT), the Host/Acquirer Definition Table (HDT), the Communications Parameters Table (CPT), and the Terminal Configuration Table (TCT). The following sections explain each of these configuration tables in detail in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

HOST DEFINITION TABLE (HDT)

This table contains information specific to the acquirer.

The following fields specify whether Data Capture is required for a particular transaction for this acquirer.

CARD DEFINITION TABLE (CDT)

This table contains information that is specific to the card issuer.

The following fields specify whether a particular transaction is allowed for a card range.

COMMUNICATION PARAMETER TABLE (CPT)

This table contains communications parameters information specific to an acquirer. The HDT and this table have a one-to-one mapping between them.

TERMINAL CONFIGURATION TABLE (TCT)

This table contains information specific to a particular vPOS terminal.

URL TABLE

The table below enumerates the URLs (Universal Resource Locators) corresponding to the transactions supported by the vPOS Terminal Cartridge in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Note that the GET method is allowed for all transactions; however, for transactions that either create or modify information on the merchant server, a GET request returns an HTML page from which the transaction is performed via a POST method.

URL DESCRIPTIONS

This section describes the GET and POST arguments that are associated with each transaction URL. It also describes the results from the GET and POST methods. For URLs that produce any kind of results, the following fields are present in the HTML document that is returned by the vPOS Terminal Cartridge:

For URLs that deal with financial transactions, the following fields are present in the HTML document that is returned by the vPOS terminal cartridge:

ACCUMULATE REVIEW

URL Functionality: This is a local information inquiry function that retrieves the local (merchant's) transaction totals (accumulators).

GET Arguments: None.

GET Results: Retrieves the transaction totals for the merchant.

Currently, the total is returned as an HTML document. The transaction totals currently returned are:

Note: Accum Review is a local function as opposed to Balance Inquiry, which is performed over the Internet with the host.

ADJUST

URL Functionality: Corrects the amount of a previously completed transaction.

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Because the Adjust transaction modifies data on the merchant server, the POST method should be used. Using the GET method returns an HTML form that uses the POST method to perform the transaction.

POST Results: On success, pvsTxnNum and txnAdjustedAmount are presented in the HTML document, in addition to the transaction fields described above.

AUTH CAPTURE

URL Functionality: This transaction is a combination of Auth Only (Authorization without capture) and Forced Post transactions.

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Because the Auth Capture transaction modifies data on the merchant server side, the POST method should be used. Using the GET method returns an HTML form that uses the POST method to perform the transaction.

POST Results: On success, an HTML document that contains the transaction fields described above is returned. On failure, an HTML document that contains the reason for the failure of the transaction is returned. The transaction is logged into a vPOS Terminal transaction log for both instances.

AUTH ONLY

URL Functionality: Validates the cardholder's account number for a sale that is performed at a later stage. The transaction does not confirm the sale to the host, and there is no host data capture. The vPOS captures this transaction record and later forwards it to confirm the sale in the Forced Post transaction request.

GET Arguments: None.

GET Results: Because the Auth Only transaction modifies data on the merchant server side, the POST method should be used. Using the GET method returns an HTML form that uses the POST method to perform the transaction.

POST Results: On success, an HTML document that contains the transaction fields is returned. On failure, an HTML document that contains the reason for the failure of the transaction is returned. The transaction is logged into vPOS Terminal transaction log for both instances.

NOTE: The /vPOSt/ci/authonly/ URL should be used for customer-initiated transactions, and /vPOSt/mi/authonly/ should be used for merchant-initiated transactions.

URL Functionality: Updates the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Card Definition Table (CDT).

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: The GET method returns a default HTML form that contains the current configuration values. The form can be filled out and posted using the /vPOSt/mi/cdt/update URL to update the card definition table.

POST Arguments: Editable CDT fields

POST Results: Depends on editable CDT fields

CLEAR ACCUMULATOR

URL Functionality: Zeroes out the accumulator totals currently resident in the vPOS terminal

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Presents a form that uses the POST method to zero the accumulators

POST Arguments: None

POST Results: Zeroes the accumulators/transaction totals in the vPOS terminal

CLEAR BATCH

URL Functionality: Zeroes out the transaction logs currently batched in the vPOS terminal

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Presents a form that uses the POST method to clear the batch

POST Arguments: None

POST Results: Zeroes the transactions that comprise the batch in the vPOS terminal

FORCED POST

URL Functionality: Confirms to the host the completion of a sale and requests for data capture of the transaction. This is used as a follow-up transaction after doing an Authorization (Online or Off-line) transaction.

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Returns the HTML form for performing the Forced Post transaction

POST Arguments:

POST Results: On success, pvsTxnNum is presented in the HTML document. On failure, an HTML document is returned that contains the reason for the failure of the transaction.

HDT REVIEW

URL Functionality: Displays the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Host Definition Table (HDT)

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: The GET method returns a default HTML form that contains the current configuration values. The form can be modified and posted using the /vPOSt/mi/hdt/update URL to update the hosts definition table. Not all fields in the host definition table are editable. The following fields are returned in a form to the user (not all of these fields are editable by a merchant):

HDT UPDATE

URL Functionality: Updates the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Host Definition Table (HDT)

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: The GET method returns a default HTML form that contains the current configuration values. The form can be filled out and posted to the merchant server using the /vPOSt/mi/hdt/update URL to update the host definition table.

UNLOCK vPOS

URL Functionality: Local function that starts the vPOS at the start of the day

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Returns an HTML form that uses the POST method to perform this transaction

POST Arguments: None

POST Results: Resets a Boolean flag on the merchant server that enables transactions to be accepted by the vPOS terminal

OFFLINE AUTH

URL Functionality: This transaction is same as the "Authorization Only" transaction, except that the transaction is locally captured by the vPOS terminal without having to communicate with the host. A Forced Post operation is done as a follow-up operation of this transaction.

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Because the Offline Auth transaction modifies data on the merchant server side, the POST method should be used. Using the GET method returns an HTML form for using the POST method to perform the transaction.

POST Results: On success, an HTML document that contains the transaction fields is returned, as described above with respect to the Auth Only functionality. On failure, an HTML document that contains the reason for the failure of the transaction is returned. The transaction is logged into the vPOS terminal transaction log for both instances.

PARAMETER DOWNLOAD

URL Functionality: Downloads the vPOS configuration information from the host and sets up the vPOS in the event of the configuration data being changed

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Retrieves an HTML form that uses the POST method for the parameter download transaction

POST Arguments: None

POST Results: Downloads the following parameters from the host and uploads them into the vPOS terminal configuration table

card/issuer definition table (CDT)

host/acquirer definition table (HDT)

communications parameter table (CPT)

terminal configuration table (TCT)

The various configuration parameters can be reviewed and modified using the URLs for the desired functionality.

PRE AUTH

URL Functionality: Used in lodging and hotel establishments to pre-authorize a charge that is completed some time in future

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Retrieves the HTML form for posting the pre-authorization transaction

PRE AUTH COMP

URL Functionality: Completes a pre-authorization transaction

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Retrieves the HTML form for posting the pre-authorization completion transaction

POST Results: On success, pvsTxnNum is presented in the HTML document. On failure, an HTML document is returned that contains the reason for the failure of the transaction.

RECONCILE

URL Functionality: This transaction is done at the end of the day to confirm to the host to start the settlement process for the transactions captured by the host for that particular vPOS batch.

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: Retrieves the HTML form for posting the Reconcile transaction.

POST Arguments: None

POST Results: On success, the reconcile function prints any discrepancies in the merchant's batch of transactions and totals vis-a-vis the host's batch of transactions in totals. The output format is a combination of the output of the Batch Review and Accum Review transactions.

RETURN

URL Functionality: Credits the return amount electronically to the consumer's account when previously purchased merchandise is returned.

URL Functionality: Updates the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Communications Parameter Table (CPT)

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: The GET method returns a default HTML form that contains the current configuration values. The form can be modified and posted to update the communication parameter table.

POST Results: On success, the HTML document returned by the vPOS contains the values set by the merchant. On failure, the HTML document contains the reason for the failure of the invocation of the URL.

TCT REVIEW

URL Functionality: Returns the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Terminal Configuration Table (TCT)

GET Arguments: None

GET Results: The GET method returns a default HTML form that contains the current configuration values. The form can be filled out and posted using the /vPOSt/mi/tct/update URL to update the terminal configuration table. The following fields are returned in a form to the user:

TCT UPDATE

URL Functionality: Updates the vPOS terminal configuration data corresponding to the Terminal Configuration Table (TCT)

GET Arguments: None

POST Arguments: All arguments in TCT Review functionality are the returned values from the /vPOSt/mi/tct/update the URL.

POST Results: On success, the POST modifies values of the terminal configuration table parameters. On failure, the HTML document contains the reason for the failure of the transaction.

QUERY TRANSACTIONS

URL Functionality: Permits the merchant and customer to query a given transaction corresponding to a transaction number

GET Results: For a given transaction, the URL returns an HTML document. If a transaction refers to an older transaction, then the transaction's entire history is made available.

URL RESULTS

Depending upon the method (GET/POST) as well as the success or failure of the HTTP request, different documents are returned to the user. The vPOS terminal provides a framework whereby different documents are returned based upon a number of preferences. Currently, the language and content-type are supported as preferences.

A simple framework is proposed here. Each of the transactions has a set of documents associated with it: form for the payment transaction, GET success, GET failure, POST success, and POST failure.

In the directory structure defined below, documents are stored corresponding to the preferences. The top level of the directory structure is the content-type, and the next level is the language (for NLS support). For example, to create text/html content in English and French, the directory structure given below would contain the HTML documents for each of the transactions. The vPOS terminal cartridge has a configuration file that allows the user to specify the content-type as well as the language to be used for a cartridge. For example, the vPOS terminal cartridge supports one content-type and language for each server.

DATA STRUCTURES & FUNCTIONS

Functions

A brief description of the Virtual Point of Sale Terminal cartridge functions are provided below. In particular, vPOSTInit(), vPOSTExec() and vPOSTShut() are the entry points for each cartridge in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The other functions implement some of the key vPOST cartridge functionality. A source code listing of the vPOS code is provided below to further accentuate the detailed disclosure of a preferred embodiment.

TRANSACTION LOG FORMAT

This section describes the format of a record for the transaction log for the vPOST cartridge.

Payment Instruments

As discussed above, the vPOS terminal supports different Payment Instruments and each of the Payment Functions described above can be initiated by these different Payment Instruments. The consumer making a purchase from a merchant provides a choice of payment options depending upon their personal preference. The Payment Instrument Class Hierarchy that is used by the different vPOS terminal Payment Functions is described further below.

FIG. 16 illustrates a transaction class hierarchy block diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The CVPCL Transaction class definition is described below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Class Name:

CVPCLTransaction

Data:

Transaction Type (int)

Transaction Date and Time (CPCLDateTime)

Card Definition Table (CVPCL.sub.-- CDT)

Host Definition Table (CVPCL.sub.-- HDT)

Communications Parameters Table (CVPCL.sub.-- CPT)

Terminal Configuration Parameters (CVPCL.sub.-- TCT)

Batch Record (CVPCLBatch)

Accumulator Record (CVPCLAccum)

Member Functions:

CVPCLTransaction();

EStatus GetTransType();

EStatus GetTransDateTime(CPCLDateTime&);

EStatus SetTransType(const int);

virtual EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *)=0;

virtual EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *)=0;

virtual EStatus ShutDown()=0;

Host Transaction Class Definitions

This section includes the host transaction class definitions in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Host Transaction Class (CVPCLHostTrans)

This is an abstract base class derived from the CVPCLTransaction class and is used for deriving transaction classes that need to communicate with the host either immediately or at a later stage.

Class Name:

CVPCLHostTrans

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCLHostTrans();

Financial Transaction Class (CVPCLFinancialTrans)

This is an abstract base class derived from the CVPCLHostTrans. This class is used to derive transaction classes that require a payment instrument (e.g., a Credit Card) associated with them to perform the transaction.

Class Name:

CVPCLFinancialTrans

Data:

Transaction Amount (CVPCLAmt)

Purchase Order Number (char[ ]])

Transaction Number (char[ ])

Authorization Identification Number (char[ ])

Retrieval Reference Number (char[ ])

Batch (CVPCLBatch)

Accumulators (CVPCLAccumulators)

Member Functions:

CVPCLFinancialTrans();

EStatus GetTransAmt(CVPCLAmt&);

EStatus GetPurchOrderNum(char *);

EStatus GetTransRefNum(char *);

EStatus GetRetRefNum(char *);

EStatus GetAuthId(char *);

EStatus GetCurrencyType(EPCLCurrency *);

EStatus SetPurchOrderNum(const char *);

EStatus SetTransRefNum(const char *);

EStatus SetRetRefNum(const char *);

This class is derived from the CVPCLFinCCTrans class and is used to perform the Merchant Balance Inquiry function.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- CCBalanceInq

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- CCBalanceInq();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

This is the abstract base class for all the transactions that are performed locally to the vPOS.

Class Name:

CVPCLLocalTrans

Data:

Record Number (int)

Host Index (int)

Member Functions:

CVPCLocalTrans();

int GetRecNum();

int GetHostIndex()

EStatus SetRecNum(const int);

EStatus SetHostIndex(const int);

Virtual POS Lock/Stop Class (CVPCLvPOSLock)

This class implements the vPOS Lock or the Stop Local functionality. Under the locked state the vPOS does not accept any transaction requests. The class is derived from the CVPCLLocalTrans base class.

Class Name:

CVPCLvPOSLock

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCLvPOSLock();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Virtual POS UnLock/Start Class (CVPCLvPOSUnlock)

This class implements the vPOS UnLock or the Start Local functionality. The class is derived from the CVPCLLocalTrans base class.

Class Name:

CVPCLvPOSUnLock

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCLvPOSUnlock();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

This is an abstract base class and is used to derive classes that implement the functionality for managing the vPOS configuration data. The class is derived from the CVPCLLocalTrans base class.

Class Name:

CVPCLConfigDataAdmin

Data:

Member Functions:

Acquirer Data or the Host Definition Table Review Class (CVPCL.sub.-- HDTReview)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Host Definition Table Review functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- HDTReview

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- HDTReview();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Issuer Data or the Card Definition Table Review Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CDTReview)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Card Definition Table Review functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- CDTReview

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- CDTReview();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Communication Parameters Table Review Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CPTReview)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Communications Parameters Table Review functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- CPTReview

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- CPTReview();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Terminal Configuration Table Review Class (CVPCL.sub.-- TCTReview)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Terminal Configuration Table Review functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- TCTReview

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- TCTReview();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Acquirer Data or the Host Definition Table Update Class (CVPCL.sub.-- HDTUpdate)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Host Definition Table Update functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- HDTUpdate

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- HDTUpdate();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Issuer Data or the Card Definition Table Update Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CDTUpdate)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Card Definition Table Update functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- CDTUpdate

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- CDTUpdate();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Communications Parameters Table Update Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CPTUpdate)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Communications Parameters Table Update functionality.

Class Name:

CVPCL.sub.-- CPTUpdate

Data:

Member Functions:

CVPCL.sub.-- CPTUpdate();

EStatus InitializeTrans(TvPOSParamsBlk *);

EStatus ExecuteTrans(TvPOSResultsBlk *);

EStatus ShutDownTrans();

Terminal Configuration Table Update Class (CVPCL.sub.-- TCTUpdate)

This class is derived from the CVPCLConfigDataAdmin class and implements the Terminal Configuration Table Update functionality.

Batch Class (CVPCLBatch)

This class defines the batch record and the operations that are performed on the batch.

Accumulator Class (CVPCLAccum)

This class defines the Accumulator record and the operations on the accumulators.

Host Definition Table Class (CVPCL.sub.-- HDT)

This class defines the Host Definition Table record and the operations on the table.

Card Definition Table Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CDT)

This class defines the Card Definition Table record and the operations on the table.

Communications Parameters Table Class (CVPCL.sub.-- CPT)

This class defines the communications parameters table and the operations on the table.

Terminal Configuration Table Class (CVPCL.sub.-- TCT)

This class defines the vPOS terminal configuration parameters table and the operations on the table.

Payment Instruments Class (CPCLPmtInst)

This section defines the Payment Instrument Class hierarchy.

Bank Cards Class (CPCLBankCard)

This class is derived from the CPCLPmtInst class and implements the bank cards class.

Credit Cards Class (CPCLCreditCard)

This class is derived from the CPCLBankCard class and has the same data and the methods as the CPCLBankCard class.

Debit Cards Class (CPCLDebitCard)

This class is derived from the CVPCLBankCard class and implements the debit card class.

vPOS Class Library Interface and API Definition

This section explains the classes that provide the interface to the vPOS class library.

Data Structures required for the vPOS Interface Class Transaction Parameters Structure (TvPOSParamsBlk)

This structure is a subset of all the transaction parameters required for the different transactions.

Transaction Results Structure (TvPOSResultsBlk)

This structure contains all the fields returned from the host and other fields that are required for doing terminal data capture.

The various status codes for the enumeration EStatus are detailed below.

vPOS Interface Class (CvPOSInterface)

This class provides the interface to the vPOS Transaction Class Library.

vPOS API Definition

This section describes the vPOS API that allows for interfacing with the vPOS Class Library. All the different vPOS transactions can be initiated using the API defined in this section.

vPOSInitialize--Initialize vPOS

This API is used to start and initialize the vPOS. The API definition is disclosed below.

vPOS Status Codes

This section details the different status codes (listed under the enumeration EStatus) that the vPOS returns for the different operations performed.

Message Sequence Diagram

FIG. 17 shows a typical message flow between the consumer, merchant, vPOS terminal, and the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment. This section describes the different classes listed in the previous section, their data, and members, and defines the type of transaction that is to be performed. Processing commences at stage 1700 when a merchant server receives a sales order and passes it via a vPOS Graphical User Interface (GUI) 1710 to an authorizer 1720 for approval and subsequent protocol processing 1730 and ultimately transmission via a Gateway 1740 to the network.

vPOS/Architecture

The architecture of the Virtual Point of Sale (vPOS) and Virtual Gateway (Gateway) architecture maintains SET compliance while providing support for additional message types that are not enabled in the SET standard. The architecture includes isolation of cryptographic details in a single module to facilitate single version government approval while maximizing the flexibility of the system for customization and facilitating transfer of updated versions on an acquirer specific basis.

FIGS. 18A through 18E are block diagrams of the extended SET architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at function block 1800 for a consumer-originated transaction via the World Wide Web (WWW) or at function block 1810 for a merchant-originated transaction on the Internet. In either case, control passes immediately to a WWW server 1820 for the is transaction to be appropriately formatted and the appropriate interface page presented, whether the transaction is a store front 1822, a shopping cart 1824, a pay page 1826, a standard terminal administration 1828-1830 transaction, or an extended terminal transaction 1834. If processing requires authentication of the transaction, then control passes through a Virtual Point of Sale (vPOS) Application Programming Interface (API) library 1840 for SET compliant transactions and through the vPOS API extensions library 1844 for extensions to the SET protocol. Then, at function block 1842 if the transaction is SET compliant, and at function block 1845 if the transaction is not SET compliant, a library of protocol stack information is used to conform the message before it is transmitted to a Gateway site for ultimate delivery to a bank host 1874 for authorization.

Extended SET messages are processed at the Gateway site on a two track basis with the division criteria being SET compliance (which will change over time as more functionality is put into SET) or SET extensions. Set compliant messages are processed via a protocol stack library 1862, and SET extensions are processed via a protocol stack extension library 1864. Then, at function block 1870, a Gateway Engine 1870 processes SET and Host specific code including gateway administration extensions 1872 that bypass the normal processing and flow directly from merchant and consumer WWW server 1820 to gateway administration extensions 1872 to Gateway Engine 1870.

As described above, there are three channels by which messages are exchanged between a vPOS 1846 and a Gateway 1856.

1. Standard SET Messages

The standard SET messages are originated by the merchant software either via pay page 1826 directly controlled by the consumer or via an operator interface including a set of HTML pages and associated executables launched by the pages (e.g., pay page 1826 and standard terminal administration 1828-1830.)

Each SET message type (e.g., authorization or capture) transmits a different set of data, and each SET message type requires a different Protocol Data Unit (PDU) to describe its encoding. Examples of how Standard SET messages are encoded are given in the SET documentation previously incorporated by reference.

2. Extended SET Messages

The Extended SET messages are utilized as an "escape mechanism" to implement acquirer-specific messages such as settlement and reconciliation, employee logon and logoff, and parameter download. The messages are developed as a set of name-value pairs encapsulated in a PKCS-7 wrapper and wrapped in Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), described in a book by N. Borenstein & N. Freed, "RFC 1521: MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies" (Sep. 1993), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. The name-value pairs can have arbitrary (8-bit) data so that arbitrary items can be passed through the extended SET channel, including executable programs and Dynamic Load Libraries (DLLs).

FIG. 18B illustrates a multipart MIME message with one Extended SET message and one Standard SET authorizing message in accordance with a preferred embodiment. MIME is utilized as an outer wrapper 1890 to allow an Extended SET message 1891 to be transmitted as a component of messages embedded in one MIME multipart message. In this manner, a standard SET message can be sent with an Extended SET message in one vPOS Gateway communication transaction.

Embedding the Extended SET messages in a PKCS-7 wrapper enables the same message authentication to occur as in standard SET messages. Thus, for SET-compliant and non-SET-compliant messages, the same mechanism can be used to restrict which entities the vPOS or Gateway will trust in any communications. An important concept in Extended SET is that all messages, of any type, are sent in a uniform name/value pair format, which allows a single Protocol Data Unit to suffice for any type of message sent through the Extended SET channel. Because arbitrary data can be sent this way, a mechanism is provided to preclude the use of the Extended SET channel by parties other than approved financial institutions. If this is not ensured, then the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce will not approve the software for export (under current U.S. Government restrictions regarding export of software encryption technology).

SET itself to some degree ensures that this Extended SET channel is used only by financial institutions. The protocol stack extension library only processes messages that have been signed by a financial institution SET certificate that is in turn signed by a payment instrument brand certificate (such as Visa or MasterCard).

Stronger control over the Extended SET channel can be achieved by further restricting processing of messages to those signed (either instead of or in addition to the financial institution SET certificate) by a second certificate belonging to a third-party agency, either governmental or private (e.g., VeriFone, as manufacturer of the software).

In this way, a particular set of Extended SET messages can be implemented by Bank X, and a different set of messages by Bank Y. If a vPOS has an extended terminal transaction interface as shown in FIG. 18A at block 1834 for Bank X and has been configured to only accept messages from a Gateway with Bank X's certificate, then it will be able to communicate those messages to a Gateway that has the certificate for Bank X and accepts messages of the types in Bank X's message set. The vPOS will not be able to connect to the Bank Y gateway or to any other system that purports to communicate via Extended SET. This restriction is further secured by utilizing a public key certificate that is "hard wired" into the vPOS and that is distributed only to gateways that use the Extended SET mechanism.

FIG. 18C is an example flowchart of message processing in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at function block 1880 when a message is received by an HTTPS server or other listener and passed to decision block 1883 to determine if the sending vPOS has transmitted an authentic message, and if the vPOS is authorized to communicate with this gateway. If the message is not authentic, then the message is logged as an error, and the error is handled as shown in function block 1889. If the message is authentic, then the message is decrypted at function block 1884, and the PDU parses the message into name and value pairs. Then, based on the message type and the extended SET version information, the remaining message is parsed at function block 1885, and the message is checked for conformance to the appropriate specification as shown at decision block 1887. If the message does not conform, then it is logged and the error handled at function block 1889. If the message conforms to the proper specification in decision block 1887, then the message is translated into the appropriate host format and sent to the host as shown in function block 1888. Thus, when a gateway receives an incoming message from a vPOS and parses the Extended SET portion of the message, a single MIME message can transmit a SET message or an Extended Set Message or both.

An export license for the encryption software can be obtained on a case-by-case basis from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and because there will be potentially millions of vPOS's it is desirable to obtain a commodities jurisdiction for the vPOS, to enable a single version of the vPOS (rather than one version for each bank) to be supported by the vPOS architecture. The architecture described here ensures that the single version of vPOS, no matter how it is configured with extended terminal transaction interfaces, cannot be used to communicate any data other than that contained in the extended SET messages that have been approved for export by the U.S. Department of Commerce to be used exclusively for a specific bank.

FIG. 18D is an example of a simple message between vPOS and the Gateway using the Extended SET channel enabling an employee to sign on, or "logon", to a given terminal in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The message includes the employee's logon ID, a password to be verified by the bank host computer, and the date and time as shown in a message 1894.

Although the contents of the message are shown without encryption in FIG. 18D, it should be noted that the information (including the logon password) are SET encrypted inside a PKCS-7 wrapper. Certain fields may be designated as mandatory for an Extended SET message to allow the Gateway or the vPOS to decide how to handle the message. For example, in message 1894, only two fields, "messagetype" and "ESETversion", are mandatory. These fields inform the Gateway that this message is of type "logon," and that the vPOS is using version "1.0A" of the ESET message formats defined for the Gateway. In this embodiment, the length indicator "[5]" is used to distinguish the length (in bytes) of the field of type "messagetype" in the message. In this way, there are no special end-of-data characters, and therefore arbitrary data need not have any "escaped" characters.

It should be noted that using escaped characters will work equally well. Total message integrity is assured by the digital signatures in the PKCS-7 wrapper. This does not, however, preclude the use of other checksumming schemes for additional pinpointing of transmission or encoding errors. The messagetype and ESETversion name and value pairs facilitate Gateway look up of what name and value pairs are expected in the "logon" message. Some name and value pairs may be mandatory, and others may be optional.

FIG. 18E is an example of a simple message between the vPOS and the Gateway using the Extended SET channel enabling an employee to sign on, or "logon", to a given terminal in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In response to the logon request message from the vPOS, the Gateway responds with a "logon accepted" message 1894, as depicted in FIG. 18E, which the vPOS, upon receipt and is authentication, then uses to unlock the terminal for that user.

3. Gateway-initiated Messages

Because SET messages between a merchant and an acquirer are currently merchant-initiated (as specified in the SET documentation), there must be a separate mechanism for initiating a message from a gateway, for example, to request the upload of management information base (MIB) data or to download new parameters. This is accomplished by requiring the Gateway to send a message to the merchant via a MIME-encapsulated PKCS-7 conformant message containing name and value pairs to the merchant server directly rather than to the SET module. This channel is shown in FIG. 18A at block 1860.

The message is verified for origination from the acquirer and is utilized to either initialize a merchant action such as to update the merchant's administration page (for example, by blinking a message saying, "PLEASE RE-INITIALIZE YOUR TERMINAL") or by initiating a request and response message pair originating from the merchant (for example, "HERE ARE THE CONTENTS OF MY MIB"). This is achieved by calling one of the extended terminal transaction interfaces (FIG. 18A at 1834), which in turn initiates a SET or Extended SET transaction.

Thread-Safe vPOS--TID Allocation

In a preferred embodiment, physical terminals process a single transaction at a time, because clerks usually process one transaction at a time. Web Servers can process many transactions at a time, and thus, payment requests can often occur simultaneously. Thus, the vPOS Software supports multi-tasking and supports multiple threads to be active at the same time in the same system as well as the same process. One of ordinary skill in the art can implement such support in the vPOS software without undue experimentation.

However, the authorizing banks require that all transaction requests include a Terminal ID (TID), and for many banks no single TID can be active in any two transaction requests that overlap in time. Thus, the vPOS requires dynamic allocation of TIDs to requesting threads.

One way of providing for multiple TID's is to assign a "base" TID, and either an "extension" (a set of extra digits appended to the base) or an increment (a number that is added to the base to obtain the complete TID). Although such a solution can be used for the majority of banks and processors, not all banks and processors can accommodate this solution. One example is First Data Corporation. For its well-known ENVOY protocol, the terminal ID must use the Luhn check as recited in an ISO standard, which adds a checksum digit to the terminal ID to reduce chances of fraud or of mistyped information. Thus, to be general enough to handle all bank and processor situations, a pool of TID's is used. The TID's stored in the pool need not be a sequential set of numbers; in fact, they can be alpha or special or numeric combinations, and the TID's need not have any relation to one another. In a preferred embodiment, a TID is represented as a token in a pool that can be associated with a particular transaction.

To provide for this requirement, the vPOS provides a TID pool in tabular form in a database management system (DBMS). A table has two columns: TID NAME and Allocation date and time. If the TID date is null, then the TID is not in use and can be assigned. A date and time field is utilized to allow TID allocations to expire. TID requests are made utilizing an SQL query on the TID Pool to find the first null or expired date and time, which is replaced with the current date and time and the TID name returned.

REMOTE vPOS

The unique architecture of Cardholder 120, Merchant 130, and Gateway 140, as shown in FIG. 1B, provides communication capability between the modules utilizing the Internet to support linkages 150 and 170. Because the Internet is so pervasive, and access is available from virtually any computer, utilizing the Internet as the communication backbone for connecting the cardholder, merchant, and access to the authorizing bank through a gateway allows the merchant vPOS software to be remotely located from the merchant's premises.

For example, the cardholder could pay for goods from any computer system attached to the Internet at any location in the world. Similarly, the merchant vPOS system could be located at a central host site where merchant vPOS systems for various merchants all reside on a single host with their separate access points to the Internet. The merchant could utilize any other computer attached to the Internet utilizing the SSL or SET protocol to query the remote vPOS system and obtain capture information, payment administration information, inventory control information, audit information, and process customer satisfaction information. Thus, without having to incur the overhead of maintaining sufficient computer processing power to support the vPOS software, a merchant can obtain the information necessary to run a business smoothly and avoid hiring IT personnel to maintain the vPOS system.

vPOS Multi-Merchant Processing

Multiple merchant processing refers to the ability of a plurality of merchants to process their individual vPOS transactions securely on a single computer. The multi-merchant processing architecture relies on each payment page obtaining the merchant name in a hidden field on the payment page. The vPOS engine receives the merchant name with a particular transaction and synchronizes the processing utilizing a SET merchant method. The SET merchant method causes the vPOS API to look up a unique registry tree based on the merchant name. This process causes the vPOS engine to engage the appropriate configuration to process the transaction at hand utilizing a Registry Tree. A Registry Tree includes Card Definition Tables (CDTs), Acquirer Definition Tables (ADTs), Merchant Definition Tables (MDTs), and Protocol Configuration Tables (PCTs). The CDTs point to specific ADTs, because each supported card can be supplied by a distinct acquirer. This is one form of split connection. Each of the ADTs in turn point to PCTs, and some acquirers can support multiple parallel gateways. A merchant's name refers to a unique database in the database management system that includes, for example, TIDs.

For example, to fully qualify a particular merchant in a multi-merchant system, the ADT is queried to ascertain the particular Gateway (VFITest), then if Bank of America requires verification of network communication information, then the particular CDT is accessed with, for example, VISA. The particular merchant will service VISA transactions utilizing a particular acquirer. The particular piece of merchandise will also be detailed in a database. Finally, the merchant Configurations will also be stored in the database to facilitate E-mail and name lookup.

vPOS CLIENT

The interaction between the vPOS and a client commences when a pay page solicits parameters of a transaction. Then, the parameters are validated to be sure the payment instrument, for example, card number is not null. Then, a transaction object is created (e.g., AUTHONLY), and the object is initialized and stuffed with parameters of the transaction (e.g., ao.setpan(accnum)), and the object is executed. This execution invokes the vPOS engine. The vPOS engine further validates the parameters based on the particular merchant's configuration. For example, some merchants do not accept American Express Cards, but will take Visa, and all merchants generally check the expiration date of the card. Assuming a valid and acceptable card has been tendered, then a TID is assigned (expiring, existing TIDs) or block a new TID from the TID Pool. This generates a STAN, XID, RRPID unique tag and creates an initial record in the transaction database, which is flagged as before gateway processing in case the transaction crashes and must be backed out. The protocol parameters are then identified in the registry based on card type, and a particular acquirer identified. Then, a protocol object is created and executed to extract results from the protocol object and the before gateway "bit" is flipped to again flag the location of the transaction in the process as it is submitted to the Gateway. The results received back from the Gateway are placed into a transaction object, which is reported back to the pay page and ultimately back to the pay page user.

vPOS Merchant Pay Customization

A novel feature of the vPOS software provides payment page customization based on a merchant's preferences. This feature automatically lists cards that are accepted by a particular merchant based on the active terminal configuration. Each approved card for a particular merchant is linked to the display via a URL that provides a pointer to the credit card information supported by the merchant. Each card has an entry in a data structure referred to as the Card Definition Table (CDT).

The vPOS merchant pay customization software in accordance with a preferred embodiment is provided in FIG. 19, which illustrates the logic utilizing a flow diagram, and in a listing of the source code provided below in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at terminal 1900 and immediately flows to function block 1910 at which an index variable is initialized for stepping through each of the accepted payment instruments for the merchant's page. Then, at function block 1930, a URL key is obtained associated with the current merchant pay page and index value. The URL key is a registry key name that points to a picture of a credit card that the merchant has associated with the pay page and which the merchant accepts as payment. At output block 1940, the card image associated with the URL key is obtained and displayed on the terminal. The CDT entry is obtained at function block 1950 utilizing the URL key. The CDT is utilized for storing information associated with each card. Then, at decision block 1960, a test is performed to determine if the last payment method card has been processed and displayed on the merchant display. If not, then the index is incremented at function block 1920 and the loop reiterated to process the next card at function block 1930. If all the cards have been processed, then control is returned to the merchant program for processing the transaction at terminal 1970.

FIGS. 20A through 20H are block diagrams and flow diagrams setting forth the detailed logic of thread processing. FIG. 20A illustrates a prior art approach to POS processing utilized in most grocery stores and department stores today. POS Terminal 2001 accepts transactions provided to it one at a time by customers 2000. For each transaction, a POS Terminal 2001 builds a transaction request 2002 and transmits it to an acquiring bank 2004 over a communications link 2003.

FIG. 20B is a prior art data structure 2002 representing a POS transaction request. Data structure 2002 includes a TID field 2005, which identifies the physical terminal from which the transaction originates. In addition to the TID field, data structure 2002 also includes other data 2006 necessary to process a transaction, which includes such fields as a transaction type, a transaction amount, a currency type (such as U.S. dollars), credit card account number, and credit card expiration date.

FIG. 20C illustrates a vPOS architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment with account requests being processed by a single acquiring bank. A vPOS 2007 processes a plurality of customers 2000 concurrently. For each such customer 2000, vPOS 2007 builds a data structure 2010, representing the transaction to be performed for that customer. Each data structure 2010 contains a unique "virtual terminal" ID. Then, vPOS 2007 selects a virtual terminal ID using a TID allocation database 2008. For each data structure 2010, vPOS 2007 initiates communication with acquiring bank 2004 using communication link 2003.

FIG. 20D is a data structure 2010 representing a vPOS transaction request in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Data structure 2010 includes a TID field 2012, which identifies a virtual terminal ID associated with a particular transaction. In addition to TID field 2012, data structure 2010 also includes other data 2006 necessary to process a transaction. Data 2006 includes such fields as a transaction type, a transaction amount, a currency type (such as U.S. dollars), credit card account number, and credit card expiration date.

FIG. 20E illustrates a TID allocation database 2008 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Database 2008 includes a TID allocation table 2011. TID allocation table 2011 includes a plurality of rows, one for each TID used by each acquiring bank. One such row 2013 is illustrated in detail. Row 2013 includes a good and service order (GSO) identifier 2014, which identifies the order being transmitted; a TID field 2015, which identifies a terminal ID that can be used with a particular acquiring bank; and an acquiring bank field 2016, which identifies the acquiring bank for which the TID is valid. In addition, row 2013 can optionally include other fields 2017 that can be used in conjunction with the order processing. A null GSO value indicates that the TID and Acquirer combination is not currently in use.

FIGS. 20F through 20H are flow diagrams of the detailed logic used to perform virtual terminal ID allocation in accordance with a preferred embodiment. FIG. 20F illustrates the main line operation of virtual TID allocation in accordance with a preferred embodiment. In stage 2020, execution begins. In stage 2021, a skeletal transaction request structure is prepared. In stage 2022, the main line routine obtains a virtual TID for inclusion within the transaction request structure, as will be more fully disclosed below with reference to FIG. 20G. In stage 2023, the routine verifies that a TID was obtained. If the TID was not obtained, for example, if more transactions are currently being processed than there are TIDs, then execution continues to stage 2024. In stage 2024, the transaction request is put in a queue for future processing. In stage 2025, the routine waits for a transaction process to end, which would free up a TID in use. At that point, control resumes from stage 2022, and the routine again attempts to obtain a TID.

If the TID was successfully obtained in stage 2023, then control proceeds to stage 2026. In stage 2026, the routine submits the transaction to the acquiring bank. In stage 2027, the transaction is processed. In stage 2028, the routine makes a database call to free up the TID that was used in the transaction. In stage 2029, transaction processing ends.

FIG. 20G depicts in detail the process of obtaining a TID from the database in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins in stage 2040. In stage 2041, the routine constructs a database call to reserve a TID for processing, for example, by constructing an SQL statement to retrieve a TID row from the database. In stage 2042, the routine executes the database call that was constructed in stage 2041. In stage 2043, the routine constructs a second database call to extract the TID from the row that was reserved in stage 2042. In stage 2044, the database call constructed in stage 2043 is executed to obtain the TID. In stage 2045, a return code is checked to verify whether the TID was successfully obtained. If the TID was successfully obtained, then control proceeds to stage 2046, which returns to the calling program. However, if the TID was not obtained, then control proceeds to stage 2047. In stage 2047, the routine checks to see whether an excessive number of retries have already been attempted. If there have been an excessive number of retries, then control proceeds to stage 2048, which exits with an error indication. If there has not been an excessive number of retries, then control proceeds once again to stage 2043 to retry the extraction operation.

FIG. 20H depicts the operation of releasing a TID that had been used in a prior transaction in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins in stage 2060. In stage 2062, the routine constructs a database call to update the row for the selected TID so that the value for the good and service order is null, thereby indicating that the selected TID is not associated with any good or service order and is therefore free for reuse. In stage 2064, the routine executes the SQL statements constructed in stage 2062, thereby releasing the TID for use in future transactions. In stage 2069, the routine returns to the calling program.

A source code listing for the transaction request processing is provided below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Default Gateway Configuration

The vPOS is initially shipped enabled to connect to a default gateway with a single instance of a gateway defined that accesses a predefined site for testing of an installation before bringing it online in a production mode. The test installation contacts and converses with an actual gateway that simulates live transactions. After the installation checks out utilizing a set of test transactions, the test gateway downloads the pre-checked customizations to the installation so that it can switch over to the production acquirer. This download processing is enabled in extensions to SET in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Internet Transaction Gateway

Payment methods that issue cards for conducting business generally utilize four major entities, which are the issuer, consumer, merchant, and the acquirer. The issuing bank that provides the consumer with a credit card is usually not the same bank as the acquiring bank that serves the merchant. When the consumer utilizes a credit card to pay for a purchase, the merchant swipes the card through the POS terminal, which makes a connection to the merchant's acquirer via the telephone network and transmits an authorization request with data read from the magnetic stripe. The acquirer's host processor, depending on the card number, will either perform local processing or switch the request to the correct issuing bank's host processor through the interchange network. In a few seconds, the authorization response is returned to the originating POS indicating either an approval or a rejection.

The Internet is a viable infrastructure for electronic commerce. Ubiquitous browser software for the WWW provides around-the-clock access to a large base of information content provided by Web servers. Utilizing a preferred embodiment, consumers using browsers can shop at virtual stores and malls presented as Web pages managed by the merchants' servers. Consumers can make purchases and pay for them using credit cards or other digital payment instruments in a secure manner. For such Internet-based payments to be authorized, a "gateway" is necessary at the back end to channel transactions to legacy processors and interchange networks.

FIG. 21 is a detailed diagram of a multithreaded gateway engine in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences when a TCP transaction 2100 is received by an HTTPS Server 2102 and parsed to an appropriate Web Adaptor 2104, which posts an encrypted SET transaction to a multithreaded gateway engine 2110. The encrypted SET request is received at a decryptor 2120, decrypted into a standard SET transaction, and authenticated for converting by a forward converter 2124. Forward converter 2124 determines if the request is an original request, an honest retry attempt, or a replay attack. The converted transaction is passed to a socket multiplexor 2130 to communicate via an existing communication link 2140 to a host computer. A security logger 2150 is also utilized for passing security records back via a database server 2160 to a database administration application 2190. A transaction logger 2155 also utilizes database server 2160 to capture transaction logs in a database 2180. Other system administration tasks 2195 include a web server administration task 2190, which logs web hits in a log 2170.

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram of Internet-based processing in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing flows from customers 2200 that are paying for products over the Internet or any other communication medium utilizing HTTPS or other protocols to one or more merchants 2210, 2220, or 2230 to a gateway 2240, which directs transactions to a particular host processor 2250 for authorization processing in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Internet Payment Authorization

In a preferred embodiment, the Gateway is a secure computer system that mediates transactions between the merchants' servers and a payment processor. The Gateway supports secure communications between merchants using the Internet on one side, and a processor using standard secure financial networks on the other side. Between the two interfaces, the Gateway maintains a detailed log of all transactions, whether in-progress, completed, or failed. The Gateway accepts transactions from merchants and converts them into legacy compatible formats before forwarding them to the host processor. Responses from the host, after the reverse conversions, will be returned to the originating merchants.

The Gateway performs various functions, including the following:

Receives encrypted credit card transactions from the merchants via the Internet

Unwraps and decrypts transactions

Authenticates digital signatures of transactions based on certificates

Supports all transaction types and card types

Accepts concurrent transactions from each of the merchant servers

Converts transaction data to legacy formats and forwards the mapped requests (in the clear) to a payment processor over existing communication links

Converts transaction responses, correlates them with the original requests, and sends the mapped responses back to the merchants

Provides logging, monitoring, reporting, and system administration

FIG. 23 illustrates a Gateway's 2330 role in a network in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Gateway 2330 strictly conforms to all SET stipulations regarding certificate management, PKCS signed data encapsulation, PKCS encrypted data encapsulation, ASN.1 representation, DER encoding, MIME encapsulation, and message sequencing. A merchant server 2300 communicates via the Internet 2310 using the SET protocol 2320 through Gateway server 2330 using a network interface processor 2340 to communicate to a legacy network 2360 in, for example, the well-known X.25 protocol 2350. A legacy host 2370 ultimately receives and processes the transaction from merchant server 2300 without modification to its code.

Internet Communication Protocols

As discussed above, the TCP/IP protocol suite is utilized at the transport level. At the application level, in compliance with the SET standard, all requests arrive at Gateway 2330 in MIME encapsulated HTTP format. Similarly, all responses from Gateway 2330 to the merchant servers (e.g., merchant server 2300) are transferred in HTTP. The HTTP protocol stipulates that a request-response pair will go through the same TCP connection, and that the originator, in this case a merchant server, will establish a connection to send the request and will take down the connection when it has received the response.

Host Payment Protocols

Message conversions performed by the Gateway will generally be significantly more than format transliterations: per-protocol differences in data elements and message semantics must be considered carefully. Some of the transaction types that are supported in a preferred embodiment are listed below.

Host Communications Protocols

A virtual, private network (VPN) between the Gateway and the host processor is established to expedite host communication. In addition, two Network Interface Processors (NIPs) are utilized such as a "near end" NIP that interfaces to the Gateway and a "far end" NIP that interfaces to the host. The NIPs handle virtual connections between themselves. The far-end NIP is responsible for specific communication details. The near-end NIP is an IP-addressable device that converts TCP messages and packets, and it is installed on a public network 2330, which is a LAN outside the corporate firewall. The Gateway on the secure public network 2330 utilizes TCP/IP 2320 to communicate with the near-end NIP.

GATEWAY FEATURES

In order to sustain reliable operations and enable graceful evolution, the Gateway is designed with some important attributes, including the following: Security, Availability, Performance, Scalability, and Manageability, as discussed below.

Security

Channel Security

At the application level, SET provides signed and encrypted data encapsulations of payment information portions of the transaction messages. Transport-level encryption of the entire message packet is required for additional security. The HTTPS protocol (i.e., HTTP over SSL 3.0) is utilized between the merchants and the Gateway. The virtual connections between the near-end NIP and the host are part of a private network. The termination will occur outside the firewall. Data between the Gateway and the host is sent in the clear with no encryption. In this network configuration, a transaction between a merchant's vPOS and the host will cross the firewall four times: SET request from vPOS to Gateway, legacy request from Gateway to NIP, LEGACY response from NIP back to Gateway, and SET response from Gateway back to vPOS.

Certificate Management

Payment Protocol Certificates

The Gateway uses certificates to authenticate the two parties involved in each MOSET transaction. Through a Certificate Authority, one certificate is issued for the Gateway and one certificate for each of the merchant servers.

Secure Channel Certificates

SSL will require separate certificates for the Gateway and the merchants.

Availability

Site redundancy and location redundancy allows the Gateway to sustain service through virtually instantaneous recovery from internal failures or external disasters that cause physical damages to the system. Minimum-outage recovery is possible with redundant configurations of important components.

Site Redundancy

The Gateway supports connections to a proprietary bank network and supports mirrored disk arrays.

Location Redundancy

The Gateway architecture supports location redundancy in which a secondary remote system is connected to the primary system via dedicated WAN links for software-driven database duplication.

Scalability

The Gateway software architecture, the choice of third-party software components, and the selection of hardware platforms enable the system to gracefully adapt and evolve to take on new demands in different dimensions.

For example, the Gateway resides on an HP 9000 that is housed in a standard 19" EIA rack. The Gateway hardware configuration is provided below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

Cryptographic Hardware

The encryption and decryption algorithms used in processing SET and SSL messages generally require significant computational power. Accordingly, a "security processor" is deployed with the Gateway to boost the performance of cryptographic algorithms. The processor is a networked peripheral device to the HP 9000 server. It provides cryptographic services suitable for SET and SSL processing, and its services are accessible via calls to software libraries running on HP-UX. FIG. 24 is a block diagram of the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment, as discussed below.

VPOS Terminal Architecture

FIG. 25 is a block diagram of the vPOS Terminal Architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The Internet 2500 provides the communication processing necessary to enable the vPOS Terminal architecture. A terminal interface Common Gateway (CG) 2520 communicates via the Internet 2500 to provide information to a vPOS OLE Server 2550 that formats information in accordance with a vPOS API DLL 2560, which uses a protocol class DLL 2570 to flesh out the message for delivery to a Gateway Server 2580. The collection of vPOS OLE Server 2550, vPOS API DLL 2560, and protocol class DLL 2570 make up the vPOS Software Development ToolKit (SDK), which are used to enable vPOS applications for interfacing with an Operator 2540.

Gateway Architecture

Operating System Software

The Gateway runs under the HP-UX Version 10.10 operating system and will be upgraded to support future significant system releases. HP-UX 10.10 conforms to major standards, including the following:

X/Open UNIX 95 (conforming with the Single UNIX Specification, SPEC 1170)

X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4 Base Profile (XPG4) OSF AES

IEEE POSIX 1003.1 and 1003.2

AT&T System V Interface Definition (SVID3 base and kernel extensions subset) Level 1 API support

UC Berkeley Software Distribution 4.3 (BSD 4.3) including such features as job control, fast file system, symbolic links, long file names, and the C shell

System V.4 File System Directory Layout

This compliance with various software standards assures that although a preferred embodiment of the invention is disclosed in association with a best mode of practicing and using the present invention, it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that other similar software and hardware environments can be readily substituted without undue experimentation.

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) Software

The Gateway uses Oracle7 Server version 7.3 as the RDMBS and will be upgraded to use future significant system releases. The multi-threaded, multi-server architecture of Oracle7 provides applications with scalability to high-volume transaction workloads. When deployed with the HP 9000 K-Class platform, Oracle7 performs a symmetrically parallel database operation across all available processors. In addition, Oracle7 includes options for creating high-availability systems such as the following:

The Oracle7 Parallel Server option extends the reliability of applications by transparently harnessing the power of clustered computers in a single logical processing complex that can tolerate individual machine failures.

Oracle7 Symmetric Replication provides high data availability. Data can be replicated from the primary system to one or more alternative sites.

RTTP Server

The Gateway utilizes Netscape's Enterprise Server 2.0 as the HTTP server. The server is designed for large-scale Internet commerce deployment. Enterprise Server 2.0 achieves performance and reliability with such features as optimized caching, SMP support, enhanced memory management, and SNMP-based performance monitoring. Efficient process management features minimize system load and increase server reliability. Security features are provided using the SSL 3.0 protocol.

Protocol Stacks

Internet and LAN--The TCP/IP protocol stack will be provided as part of the HP-UX operating system.

Other Application-Level Protocols

Application-level protocols enable client-server interoperability. Each of the following protocols are transported using TCP or UDP.

HTML. HTML will be used to define screens for Gateway system administration.

HTTP. The HTTP layer is part of Enterprise Server 2.0. The server is administered with a Web browser.

SQL*Net. The Gateway's Oracle7 database can be accessed by administration clients using SQL*Net. Administration software can establish database connectivity to retrieve data for generating transaction reports.

SNMP. Enterprise Server 2.0 can be monitored using the well-known SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). The Gateway utilizes SNMP for remote system management.

Transaction Performance Monitoring and Measurement

The "hits" performance indicators are available from the Web server. Statistics can be generated at any time to highlight the load pattern or to pinpoint the time when the server was most active.

Gateway statistics about transaction requests (by transaction type) and transaction results (e.g., success, failed due to host, and failed due to authentication) can be determined at any time for a particular time interval by generating a report.

The Gateway is upgradeable to interoperate with a real-time event monitoring system such as OpenVision's Performance Manager.

Basic Request/Response Mappings

The following table shows the basic request/response mapping between the SET protocol and the LEGACY protocol.

Detailed Message Field Mappings

The following sections map the fields in LEGACY messages to fields in SET messages. The names of the SET fields are the names used in the SET ASN.1 specification. The full scope of the SET fields is listed in order to remove any ambiguity (but does not necessarily reflect actual naming conventions in source code).

LEGACY--Authorization Request Response (CTR)

The field Settlement Date is returned by the host in a LEGACY Authorization Request Response (when a transaction is force posted). This Settlement Date field contains the day that a posted transaction will be settled between the Merchant and the Acquiring Bank. Because a bank desires that this date be made available to the Merchant for the purposes of financial record keeping, this field is returned to vPOS.

Error Code Location in SET response messages

The following table shows the explicit SET field in which the canonical error code will be returned in SET response messages.

The canonical error response code values and descriptions were taken directly from "ISO 8583:1987 section 4.3.8 Table 7".

Error Code Values in SET response messages

The above table itemizes the proposed mapping of LEGACY specific action codes and error code pairs to the canonical error codes that will be sent in the SET response messages.

VeriFone Proprietary SET Extensions

The SET protocol currently has no provisions to support "Balance Inquiry" requests. Balance Inquiry requests are used by the Merchant to query its Acquiring Bank as to various totals for the current days or past days transaction totals. The following two sections detail a proposed mapping between the LEGACY protocol and two new VeriFone proprietary SET extensions as follows: BalInq (Balance Inquiry) and BalRes (Balance Response). The BalInq request is used by vPOS to query the Gateway as to the transaction totals, and BalRes is the response sent by the Gateway to vPOS.

Gateway Analysis for SET Message Handling

This section tackles general design considerations of the Gateway software and is not limited to LEGACY (unless specifically mentioned). The complete functional behavior of the Gateway will be described further below.

Replay Attack Handling

A replay attack at the Gateway is a request involving either of the following:

a) the request is stale (the request was received "too late" with respect to the reqdate in the request). This window is specified by a configurable Gateway policy.

b) the request is not stale but the exact rrpid (Request/Response Pair Id) has already been seen before in a request and still logged in the Gateway database. The <xid, mid, rrpid> tuple will be the primary key that determine whether a request had already been received. This will allow the possibility of the same rrpid to be generated from the same merchant but for a xid and also allow the same rrpid to be generated by a totally different merchant.

New Attempt vs. Retry Attempt

Messages sent between the vPOS and the Gateway may be lost in transit. This can happen either because of hardware or software problems in the Internet or for hardware or software reasons local to the Gateway or Merchant System. The question is then "How does a Gateway recognize an honest retry attempt from an initiator?" First, some background into the nature of a SET request is provided. SET requests have the following fields:

Let the following tuple represent a generic SET request:

<xid, mid, tid, rrpid, reqdate, regdata>

The merchant establishes the xid during the shopping phase with the consumer. The same xid is used for both the AuthReq and the CapReq and subsequent CreditReq requests. Using the same xid for many requests makes it impossible for the Gateway to distinguish between repeated transactions versus new transactions.

For example, how could a Gateway possibly determine whether two valid CredReq requests were to be interpreted as two individual credits or a retry of a single request.

request 1: <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.1, reqdate.sub.1, reqdata.sub.1 > (perhaps a CredReq for $10.00)

request 2: <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.2, reqdate.sub.2, reqdata.sub.1 > (perhaps a new CredReq for $10.00)

could also be interpreted as . . .

request 1: <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.2, reqdate.sub.2, reqdata.sub.1 > (perhaps a CredReq for $10.00)

request 2: <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.2, reqdate.sub.2, reqdata.sub.1 > (perhaps a retry of above)

The reqdates are different in both cases, because the date is generated along with the rrpid to thwart replay attacks. In this example, the Gateway will not be able to determine whether the second CreditReq should be performed or whether it is simply a retry to request 1 with rrpid.sub.1. The Gateway must know whether or not to apply a new credit or to deliver a response that it may already have from the host (it may have came too late for the first attempt or have been lost on the way to vPOS). If no response was logged from the host for request 1, then the Gateway could repeat its original request to the host when receiving request 2. In a sense, the Gateway will act as an intelligent request and response cache.

The Gateway splits the rrpid number space into two parts. One main part that will remain the same for the same request across all its retry attempts and a smaller portion to indicate the number of retry attempts. Then,

rrpidRetryCount.ident.rrpid MOD MAXRETRIES (0 for initial request, >0 for a retry)

The initial rrpids generated by vPOS software are equal to 0 MOD MAXRETRIES, and in subsequent retries the lower order digits are incremented by one for each retry attempt. This requires extra data stored in the vPOS application. The vPOS software persistently stores the rrpid used (which contains the retry count of the transaction) so that repeated attempts will follow the correct semantics.

In general, the Gateway will support the following logic [assuming the second request is fresh and not a replay attack]:

If two requests,

request 1 : <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.1, reqdate.sub.1, reqdata.sub.1 >

request 2: <xid.sub.1, mid.sub.m, tid.sub.t, rrpid.sub.2, reqdate.sub.2, reqdata.sub.1 >are received at t.sub.1 and t.sub.2 (where t.sub.2 >t.sub.1) and,

(rrpid.sub.1 -(rrpid.sub.1 MOD MAXRETRIES)).ident.(rrpid.sub.2 -(rrpid.sub.2 MOD MAXRETRIES))

then the Gateway will interpret the second request as a new request.

But if,

(rrpid.sub.1 -(rrpid.sub.1 MOD 100)).noteq.(rrpid.sub.2 -(rrpid.sub.2 MOD MAXRETRIES))

then the Gateway will interpret the second request as a retry request.

In addition to being able to distinguish between a retry and a new request, the proposed rrpid scheme can be used to determine how many vPOS requests were lost in the Internet. This is a useful value-added service, for example, for system management purposes.

Robustness and Error Handling Issues

There are several robustness issues that need to be addressed. The basic flow is that vPOS sends a request to the Gateway, the Gateway logs the SET key fields from the incoming attempt in the database. The Gateway then generates a host request, which it logs completely in the database. The host handles the request and generates a response that is directed towards the Gateway that when received is logged completely in the Gateway database. Finally, the Gateway generates a SET response to vPOS, the contents of which is not logged in the database.

If the Gateway has not received the request or receives the request but is not able to log the request in the database, then it is easily handled by a vPOS retry attempt. This recovery action needs no further discussion. In general, if the vPOS does not receive a reply to a request it has sent to the Gateway, then it must retry persistently until a response is received. Retry attempts from vPOS for the same request include the same base portion of the rrpid but a different value in the retry counter, as discussed above.

The Gateway handles replay attacks as discussed above.

If the Gateway receives a request that it has already received from vPOS, then there could be several possible dispositions:

a) the request had already been handled completely with the host, and a host response is in the Gateway database. In this case, the Gateway can simply translate the host response to a SET response and send it to vPOS.

b) the request had been sent to the host before (as determined by a database field), but a response from the host is not on file. In this case, the Gateway retries the host request.

If the vPOS times-out for any reason, then it retries later using an rrpid that indicates a retry attempt. If the Gateway receives a late-response (after vPOS has given up), then it simply logs it in the database for that retry attempt (if no retry attempt for the transaction is still outstanding at the host). There is a rare situation in which the original response could arrive so late that it could be confused with the response from a currently outstanding retry attempt with the host. This situation is logged, and the first response is not sent back to vPOS.

A response from the host indicating a successful transaction may get lost on the way back to the Gateway or not be able to be logged in persistent storage in the Gateway. In either case, vPOS is in a situation in which the retry request when received by the host may result in a response from the host indicating that the request is a duplicate. The vPOS software should be able to handle this situation. In the LEGACY case, when a duplicate post is received by the host, the second one automatically causes the first one to void, and the second transaction also fails. In this case, vPOS should retry the transaction under a new rrpid. If the transaction goes through end-to-end, then all effects of the previous transactions will not matter.

TokenOpaque Contents

The Gateway requires information captured at the time of an AuthReg that must be repeated to the host at the time of the associated CapReq. The mechanism of choice (built into SET) for this is enabled utilizing this data in the TokenOpaque token of the CapToken which is sent in an AuthRes. This CapToken is stored at the Merchant system and represented to the Gateway at the time of the CapReq. The format of a TokenOpaque is an OctetString.

The following general format (not specific to LEGACY) is proposed for capturing this information:

Host Specific Data (LEGACY-only)

For "LEGACY" version "1.0", it is proposed that newline separated "name[length]=value" pairs be used to store the host specific data. A null character will terminate the host specific data. The following host specific data (name value pairs) will be included:

NOTE: PI contains PAN and ExpirnDate.

Proposal for AVS Data Encoding

The "Address Verification" data element for the "Address Verification Service" (AVS) is defined in SET as an IA5String. Each host may require different data to be sent to use the AVS feature. The Gateway extracts the information from this to inter-work with the legacy systems. A well-defined format for the AVS data is generally required.

For example, the following data structure is utilized to deliver the AVS data.

An empty line indicates the end of AVSData.

The detailed information that is available for the Address Verification Service depends on the Payment Window that captures the data from the consumer.

AVS Data (LEGACY-only)

For "LEGACY" version "1.0" the ZipPostalCode name value pair is required. The Gateway will only use the first 5 characters of this value.

Transaction Replay Attacks

The processing of Internet-based payment transactions is a coordinated interaction between the Internet Transaction Gateway and the vPOS servers that is based on the following principles. A vPOS terminal, as the initiator of the payment transaction, is responsible for the round-trip logical closure of the transaction. A vPOS will retry a transaction that has been initiated with the Gateway in which the response for the request was never received from the Gateway. A vPOS terminal selects out of a pre-assigned range, a Terminal-Id that is to be used by the Gateway in a request to the host processor. This data element is transported from the vPOS to the Gateway along with the payment-related information. The Terminal-Ids must be unique among the concurrent vPOS instances on a vPOS server system. However, the Terminal-Ids have no history. For example, a subsequent Force Post transaction need not use the same Terminal-Id as the original Authorization transaction. The vPOS is responsible for making sure that only one request is outstanding for the same <Merchant-id, Terminal-id> data elements from a vPOS server system. The Gateway does not know that a response was successfully received by vPOS. As a result, the vPOS is responsible for initiating any retry attempts. The Gateway does not initiate a retry attempt with the host processor without an explicit retry request from the vPOS. When asked to retry a request with the host, the Gateway performs a relational database look-up and delivers a response that has already been received from the host processor but was previously missed by the vPOS. This behavior of the Gateway is also known as the "transaction response cache." The Gateway needs to know that a vPOS request is a retry of something already sent. The prior request may or may not have been received. A solution for determining the difference between a retry attempt and a new request is described above. The vPOS understands the "canonical" error codes that it will receive via the Gateway and initiates the proper recovery action or generates the appropriate user-interface dialog or both.

FIG. 26 is an architecture block diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at function block 2600 where the Graphical User Interface (GUI) part of the application is initialized. GUI application 2600 provides the consumer with support for ordering and making payments during the shopping process. There are also GUI components provided for wallet creation; importing, certificate, and payment method creation and maintenance; and for transaction register review, and reporting. The screen designs, and their associated logic, for the helper applications and applets are individually discussed in detail below.

A Certificate Manager 2604 manages the automatic downloading of a consumer's certificate from a bank, validation of a consumer's and a merchant's certificates, and automatic requisition of certificate renewal.

A Payment Manager 2606 coordinates and completes the payment request that is received from the merchant system. The payment request is received via a MIME message in the native code implementation or via an applet in the Java implementation. The payment request received contains the final GSO, Ship-To name, merchant certificate, merchant URL, coupons, and the payment amount. Payment manager 2606 then communicates with the payment related GUI component to interact with the consumer to authorize and complete the payment transaction. Payment manager 2606 is also responsible for determining the payment protocol based on the consumer's payment instrument and the merchant's preferred payment protocol.

Payment manager 2606 includes a well-defined Application Programming Interface (API) that enables Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to interface with payment manager 2606 to make payments to specific HTTP sites.

Payment manager 2606 enforces standard operations in the payment process. For example, the receipt and the transaction record can automatically be transferred to the Wallet file once the payment is completed.

FIG. 27 is a block diagram of the payment manager architecture in accordance with a preferred embodiment. A user (e.g., customer) interfaces with a payment manager 2730 via a user interface 2700 that responds to and sends a variety of transactions 2702, 2704, 2706, 2708, and 2710. The transactions include obtaining the next record, payment record, receipt, acceptance of the payment instrument, and GSO components. In turn, payment manager 2730 sends transactions 2714 and receipts 2720 to wallet manager 2722 and receives payment instruments, certificates, and private keys from a wallet manager 2722.

Payment manager 2730 also sends and receives transactions to a protocol manager 2770 including a merchant's payment message 2760, a consumer certificate and a PK handle 2750, a merchant URL 2742, a payment 2740, a signed receipt 2734 and a GSO, Selected Payment Protocol, and a Selected Payment Instrument 2732. Payment manager 2730 also accepts input from the payment applet or MIME message from the merchant as shown at function block 2780. One aspect of the payment processing is a Consumer Payments Class Library (CPCL) 2770, which encapsulates the payment protocols into a single API. By encapsulating the payment protocols, applications are insulated from protocol variations. A SET Protocol provides an implementation of the client-side component of the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) Protocol. A complete implementation of the client-side component of the CyberCash micro-payment protocol is also provided.

Wallet Manager 2722 provides a standard interface to the wallet. Wallet Manager 2722 defines the wallet database structures and the payment instrument data structures, controls the access to the wallet, and provides concurrency checking if more than one application attempts to open the same wallet. The interface to wallet manager 2722 is published to allow OEMs to interface with the wallet manager and access the wallet database.

Wallet manager 2722 includes the following sub-components:

The Wallet Access component provides an interface to read and write wallet information.

The Transaction Manager component provides an interface to read and write transactions corresponding to a wallet into the wallet database.

The Payment Instrument Manager component manager provides a common interface to the specific payment instrument access components.

The Credit Card Access, Debit Card Access, Check Access components deal with a specific payment instrument. A Data Manager provides storage and retrieval of generic data items and database records. It is assumed that data fields, index fields, or entire data records can be marked as encrypted, and the encryption process is largely automated. The data manager has no specific knowledge of database records appropriate to different payment methods. This layer is separated out so as to reduce changes required when new payment methods are introduced. However, RSA key pairs and certificates might be considered as "simple" data types. This component also provides an abstraction, which supports wallet files stored on computer disk or in smart cards.

The Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC)/Java Data Base Connectivity (JDBC) component provides Data Base Connectivity for formal database components. An embodiment of the Smart Card Wallet allows wallet data to be stored or secured by a cryptographic token or both.

A preferred embodiment includes a single file or directory of files comprising a "wallet", which includes personal information and information about multiple payment methods. These payment methods (Visa cards, debit cards, smart cards, and micro-payments) also include information such as account numbers, certificates, key pairs, and expiration dates. The wallet can also include all the receipts and transaction records pertaining to every payment made using the wallet. A Cryptographic API component provides a standard interface for RSA and related cryptographic software or hardware. This support includes encryption, signature, and key generation. Choice of key exchange algorithm, symmetric encryption algorithm, and signature algorithm are configurable. A base class stipulates generic behavior, and derived classes handle various semantic options (e.g., software-based cryptography versus hardware-based cryptography.)

The Cryptographic Software portion provides RSA and DES support. This may be provided utilizing the SUN, RSA, or Microsoft system components depending on the implementation selected for a particular customer. Cryptographic Hardware creates a lower level API which can underpin the Cryptography API and be utilized to replace Cryptography Software with an off-the-shelf cryptography engine. The message sequence charts describe the flow of messages and data between the consumer, the browser, or the various major components of the system of FIG. 26. The major components of the system are the Merchant system, which includes the vPOS, the PayWindow, and the Payment Gateway. The merchant system allows a consumer to shop, accept the payment transactions sent by the PayWindow application, and send payment transactions to the acquiring bank. The Consumer Payments Class Library (CPCL) module is a layer within the application, which sends the payment transactions securely from the consumer to the merchant.

FIG. 28 is a Consumer Payment Message Sequence diagram in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The diagram presents the flow of messages between the consumer, the browser, the merchant is system, the PayWindow application, and the CPCL. This message flow describes the payment process from the time an order is completed, and the consumer elects to pay, to the time the payment is approved, and the receipt is returned to the consumer. The difference between the Native implementation and Java implementation of the PayWindow application is in the delivery of the order information to the PayWindow. Once the order information is received by the PayWindow, the flow of messages and data is the same for both implementations. In the case of the Native implementation, the order information is delivered via a MIME message. This MIME message is sent to the PayWindow by the browser via a document file. In the Java implementation, the order information is delivered to the PayWindow by an applet. The merchant system sends an applet with the order information to the browser which in turn delivers the order to the PayWindow. Once the order is received, the PayWindow interacts with the consumer and the Protocol modules for the completion of the payment process.

Enters Order and Clicks Calculate Order 2820

This message represents the consumer order entry and the clicking of the `Calculate Order` button. The consumer's shopping experience is all condensed into this one message flow for the purpose of highlighting the payment process. The actual implementation of the shopping process varies, however, the purpose does not, which is the creation of the order.

Order 2830

This message represents the order information, which is sent by the browser to the merchant via an HTML form.

Payment Applet with GSO, PPPS, AIs, merchant certificate, and URL 2840

On receipt of the order, the merchant system calculates the payment amount. This message represents the HTML page that is sent by the merchant system detailing the payment amount along with the Java payment applet, which contains the GSO, PPPS, AIs, merchant certificate, and URL.

Run Payment Applet 2845

The Java enabled browser runs the Payment applet. The applet displays a button called "Pay" for the consumer to click. This is embedded in the HTML page delivered by the merchant.

Clicks Pay 2850

This message represents the clicking of the Pay button on the browser by the consumer after confirming the payment amount.

GSO, PPPs, AIs, merchant certificate, and URL 2860

This message represents the GSO, PPPs, AIs, merchant certificate, and the merchant URL carried by the Java applet. The Java applet now delivers these to the PayWindow application.

Merchant certificate 2862

This message represents the merchant's certificate, which is sent to the CPCL module for checking the validity of the merchant.

Merchant's validity 2864

The CPCL modules examine the merchant's certificate and send this message to the PayWindow indicating whether or not the merchant is a valid merchant.

Wallet, Payment Instruments 2866

This message represents the wallets and payment instruments that is displayed to the consumer. Not all payment instruments from a wallet is shown to the consumer. Only the ones accepted by the merchant is shown.

Payment Instrument 2868

This message represents the payment instrument selected by the consumer. This message is created in the current design when the user double clicks on the payment image in the "Select Payment Method" Window.

GSO 2870

This indicates that the GSO is displayed to the consumer in the "Make Payment Authorization" screen.

Authorization of Payment 2872

This message represents the authorization of the payment by the consumer. The consumer authorizes the payment by clicking the `Accept` button on the "Payment Authorization" screen.

Decide Payment Protocol 2874

Once the consumer authorizes the payment, the payment protocol is decided by PayWindow based on the merchant's Payment Protocol Preferences and the consumer selected payment instrument.

Payment Authorization 2875

These messages represent the merchant's URL, the GSO, the payment protocol (PP) to use, the account number, the certificate, and the private key handle (PK) associated with the payment instrument, which is sent to the protocol module.

GSO with Payment Authorization 2876

This message represents the payment instructions that is sent by the protocol module to the Merchant system. The GSO, PI, consumer certificate, and PK is packaged based on the payment protocol.

Signed Receipt 2878

This message represents the digitally signed transaction receipt received by the protocol module from the merchant.

Save Receipt with hash value 2880

The digitally signed transaction receipt is saved by the PayWindow for future reference.

Payment Successful 2882

This indicates that the transaction receipt and the `payment successful` have been displayed to the consumer.

Certificate Processing

A payment instrument must be certified by a "certificate issuing authority" before it can be used on a computer network. In the case of credit card payments, the issuer may be one of the card issuing banks, but it may also be a merchant (e.g., SEARS), a transaction acquiring bank, or an association such as VISA or Mastercard.

Payment instrument information is stored in the consumer's wallet. The certificate that authorizes the payment instrument will be stored along with that data in a secured database. The process of acquiring a certificate is described below. A certificate can be delivered to a consumer in a preconfigured wallet. The consumer receives a wallet, which includes the certificate together with the necessary details associated with a payment instrument including a payment instrument bitmap that is authorized by a certificate issuing authority or the agencies represented by the issuing authority.

Obtaining a certificate

A consumer will deliver or cause to be delivered information to a certificate issuing authority. FIG. 29 is an illustration of a certificate issuance form in accordance with a preferred embodiment. A user may fill out the form on-line, on paper and mail it in, or get his bank or credit card company to deliver it. The consumer delivered data will usually contain a public key belonging to a security key pair generated by consumer software. This information will normally be mailed to the consumer's address and actuated by a telephone call from the consumer. The certificate authority takes this information and uses it to validate that he is indeed entitled to use the payment method. This processing normally takes a few days to accomplish. Information will normally be exchanged with the organization issuing the payment method in the physical space if there is one and with credit agencies. The certificate information is loaded into the consumer's software to enable payment processing to proceed online.

In some cases the consumer will be able to select details about a payment instrument holder (wallet) he desires to own. This may be the icon representing a holder, the access password, or other information. After creating the certificate, the issuing authority can use information received in the certificate application to create a custom payment instrument holder ready to use. This payment instrument holder generally includes the following information. Payment instrument information including a card number 2900 and an expiration date 2902. Personal information including a name 2904, an address 2906, a social security number 2908, and a date of birth 2910.

The associated certificate (e.g., the well-known X.500 standard), an associated public key, or in some cases public and private key pair (e.g., RSA), and an approved bitmap representing the payment instrument are provided to the requesting consumer. FIG. 30 illustrates a certificate issuance response in accordance with a preferred embodiment. An approved bitmap for a VISA card is shown at function block 3000. Also, a default payment holder 3010 and a is default payment holder name are provided with the certificate issuance. After the consumer acquires payment instrument holder 3010, the payment instrument holder is immediately visible to him in his collection of payment instrument holders.

FIG. 31 illustrates a collection of payment instrument holders in accordance with a preferred embodiment. A predefined payment instrument holder 3100 is the same JOHN's WALLET that was predefined based on defaults by the certificate issuance form.

FIG. 32 illustrates a default payment instrument bitmap 3200 associated with predefined payment instrument holder 3210 resulting from the consumer filling in and obtaining approval for a VISA card in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

FIG. 33 illustrates a selected payment instrument with a fill-in-the-blanks for the cardholder in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The next time the payment instrument holder is opened in a payment context, the certificate issuing authority's approved instrument bitmap can be used to select the payment instrument and utilized to make purchases.

FIG. 34 illustrates a coffee purchase utilizing the newly defined VISA card in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

FIG. 35 is a flow diagram of conditional authorization of payment in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at function block 3500 at which the program initializes the connection between the cardholder and the merchant for the purposes of shopping. After the cardholder completes shopping, a new SSL connection is established, which provides authenticating information to the merchant. At this point, the merchant is able to execute payment functionality (based on SSL or SET) conditionally, based upon the quality and character of the digital signature and the certificate used to validate the signature. Then, at function block 3510, the cardholder selects the payment instrument for the particular transaction. For example, payment instruments include VISA, MASTERCARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS, CHECK, SMART CARD, or DEBIT CARD. The payment method is then submitted to the merchant at function block 3520. The merchant then initializes the SET connection to the acquiring bank at function block 3530 if the connection is not already established. Then, at function block 3540, the certificate is submitted to the merchant from the acquiring bank. The certificate includes a public key portion and a private key used as an irrebutable digital signature to authenticate the parties to the transaction. The certificate also includes information on the level of credit risk, which allows a merchant to conditionally decide on the authorization or rejection of credit under a particular payment instrument based on their risk level and the merchant's personal comfort level with the ability of the cardholder to pay. This processing has not previously been possible, because the information returned from the authorizing bank did not include a level of credit risk a cardholder posed, rather it only contained credit rejected or approved information.

A detailed description of the Gateway internals is presented below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

FIGS. 36 through 48 are vPOS screen displays in accordance with a preferred embodiment.

FIG. 49 shows how the vPOS authenticates an incoming response to a request in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Processing commences at function block 4930 when a message is received by the HTTPS, SET server, or other listener that originated the request to which this response corresponds. The message is passed to decision block 4940 to determine if the sending Gateway has transmitted an authentic message, and if the gateway is authorized to communicate with this vPOS. If the message is not authentic, then the message is logged as an error or possible attack, and the error is handled as shown in function block 4970. If the message is authentic, then the message is decrypted at function block 4950, and the PDU parses the message into name and value pairs. Then, based on the message type and the extended SET version information, the remaining message is parsed at function block 4960, and the message is checked for conformance to the appropriate specification as shown at decision block 4980. If the message does not conform, then it is logged and the error handled at function block 4970. If the message conforms to the proper specification in decision block 4980, then the message is translated into a standardized argument string to be passed to the appropriate executable or code entry point in the vPOS as shown in function block 4990. Thus, when a vPOS receives an incoming message from a Gateway and parses the Extended SET portion of the message, the message may cause the vPOS to execute a program that takes action or queries the user to take action.

Gateway Customization via the Extended SET Channel

Gateway customization in Extended SET is extremely powerful and a novel concept for vPOS processing. Each vPOS includes one or more "serial numbers" unique to each copy of the software (a serial number may be embedded in the software or may be a component of a public key certificate used in the software). Once a merchant has selected an acquirer and obtained the appropriate certificates, the vPOS can be customized utilizing the communication link and messages containing customization applications.

A bank distributes vPOS via different sales channels. The first sales channel is direct from a bank to an existing merchant with whom the bank already has an existing relationship. In this case, a version of vPOS already customized for a bank is sent to the merchant, either directly by a bank, or through a third-party distributor or service bureau. The customizations may involve modification or replacement of, for example, store front 1822, shopping cart 1824, pay page 1826, standard terminal administration transaction interface 1828-1830, or an extended terminal transaction interface 1834. This type of distribution is a standard model of distribution of software that is customized for small target market segments.

A distribution approach that innovatively uses the Extended SET channel is in which the potential merchant acquires, through some non-bank channel, a "generic" vPOS that has not yet been customized to interact with a specific bank. The generic vPOS can communicate with a "test gateway", which the merchant may use to experiment with the various features of vPOS and to test the integration of the vPOS into a total online storefront.

In order to actually transact business over the Internet, the merchant must first obtain a merchant ID from the merchant bank with which he signs an acquiring agreement. For online payment processing, the merchant must also obtain an appropriate set of digital credentials in the form of public key certificates and possibly additional passwords, depending on the financial institution. Once these credentials are obtained, the merchant is ready to customize the already-obtained generic vPOS to communicate with a merchant bank's gateway.

Using the built-in "serial number" certificate and the Test Gateway public key certificate (which is "hard-wired" into the vPOS software), it is possible to securely download a particular bank's customization applications to a specific copy of the vPOS software. Once the vPOS is appropriately configured, the last stage of customization download is to configure the vPOS so that it only responds to a public key certificate of the merchant's acquirer. This process is illustrated here in the context of a merchant who obtains a vPOS that talks to the VeriFone test gateway and desires to customize the vPOS to interact with a gateway at a bank.

The merchant has purchased a vPOS from a non-bank channel. The version communicates with the VeriFone Test Gateway. The merchant uses the gateway to learn about using vPOS and to test the integration of his storefront system with his payment system. The merchant also obtains certificates for payment processing from a bank, the merchant bank of choice for the merchant. The merchant is now ready to customize the generic vPOS to talk to the bank gateway.

FIG. 50 is a flow diagram for the merchant interaction with the Test Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The merchant begins at function block 5000 at which the newly-obtained merchant SET certificates are installed in the vPOS. The merchant then directs the vPOS to connect to the VeriFone Test Gateway by selecting this option from a vPOS terminal administration home page 5005. The choice of this option invokes an extended terminal admin page from the default set of such pages supplied with the generic version of vPOS. This program guides the customization process.

The merchant, interacting with the extended terminal admin page, navigates to the list of gateways, which is maintained by the Test Gateway and selects the bank to connect by selecting from the list of banks, at function block 5015. During this process, the merchant's public key certificates are uploaded to the Test Gateway, and checked (at decision block 5025) to verify that the certificates have been signed by the bank to customize the vPOS for the bank. If the certificates do not match, then the merchant is advised of the situation at function block 5028 and must select a different bank. If the certificates are not valid SET certificates as detected at decision block 5020, then the merchant is advised at function block 5028, and the session terminates. If the certificates are valid and match the selected bank, then customization continues at function block 5030.

The extended terminal administration program in vPOS receives a list of the customizations from the Test Gateway that must be performed to specialize the vPOS for a specific bank. Some of these customizations are mandatory, and others are optional. In function block 5030, the vPOS advises the merchant of the customizations, prompting for any choices that must be made by the merchant. The merchant's actions at this point drive decision block 5035, in which the vPOS either returns itself to the "generic" state and terminates the interaction, or begins the configuration of the vPOS, depending on the merchant's confirmation of the request to begin the configuration.

If the merchant has authorized the changes, then control is passed to function block 5040, in which the vPOS stores the certificates of any gateways that it will allow future configuration changes to be initiated from in its database. This may be only a specific bank, such as a bank and the Test Gateway, or other combinations. If only a single, non-Test, bank-owned gateway is allowed to download changes, the vPOS is no longer customizable for any other bank. Then, a new copy would be purchased by the merchant to have it customized for another bank. If the Test Gateway is still allowed to customize the vPOS, then the merchant could switch to another merchant bank and have the current vPOS updated to work with the new bank.

In function block 5050, the customizations are downloaded to the vPOS. The downloads comprise a set of HTML pages and a set of executable programs or scripts that read data from the merchant, perform various functions, and present data to the merchant. In general, the customizations downloaded may augment or replace in part or in whole any and all of function blocks 1822, 1824, 1826, 1828, 1830, or 1834 in FIG. 18A. At a minimum, the terminal "home page" will be replaced so that it points to the new functionality. At this point, the customization of the vPOS has been completed, and the merchant can now begin sending payment requests to the merchant bank or processor through the vPOS.

Gw.sub.-- ClearSetRequestHandler

FIG. 51 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the GatewayClearSetRequestHandler routine in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at Stage 5105. At Stage 5110, a SET analysis routine is called to analyze the SET request, as will be more fully disclosed below, and a status flag is set, which indicates the next stage to be performed by the Gateway. At stage 5120, the Gateway checks to see whether the status is set to indicate that a response should be provided to the user. If so, execution proceeds to stage 5190, which ends the request handling routine and returns control to a calling routine, which then provides a response to the user. Otherwise, execution proceeds to stage 5130. At stage 5130, the Gateway checks to see if the status is set to indicate that forward translation is required. Forward translation is necessary to translate an outgoing message into a format that can be understood by the host computer. If forward translation is indicated, then execution proceeds to stage 5135. At stage 5135, the outgoing message is forwarded translated, as more fully disclosed below with respect to FIG. 53. If no forward translation is indicated, for example, if an already-translated transaction is being retried, then execution proceeds to stage 5140. At stage 5140, the Gateway checks to see if the next stage is communication to the host. If so, the Gateway proceeds to stage 5145, and initiates host communication as will be more fully discussed below with respect to FIG. 54. If not, execution proceeds to stage 5150. At stage 5150, the Gateway checks to see whether reverse translation is indicated. Reverse translation translates a response from a host into a format useable by the calling routine. If reverse translation is indicated, then execution proceeds to Stage 5155, and the reverse translation is performed, as will be more fully discussed below with respect to FIG. 55. In any case, after either forward translation in stage 5135, host communication in stage 5145, or reverse translation in stage 5155, control returns to stage 5120 for further processing. As will be more fully disclosed below, the forward translation, host communication, and reverse translation routines manipulate status indicators to prevent the occurrence of an infinite loop.

The Gw.sub.-- ClearSetRequestHandler routine as depicted in FIG. 51 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

AnalyzeSetRequest

FIGS. 52A and 52B are flow diagrams that depict the execution of the AnalyzeSetRequest routine in accordance with a preferred embodiment. This routine is executed at stage 5110 as illustrated in FIG. 51. Execution begins at stage 5200. At stage 5205, the various fields in the SET record are obtained, as will be more fully disclosed below with respect to FIGS. 56A and 56B. At stage 5210, the Gateway checks the retry count. A retry count is zero indicates that the request being analyzed is a new request, and control proceeds to stage 5212, indicating a new request. If the retry account is non-zero, then this means that the request is a retry of a prior request, and control proceeds to stage 5214 at which a retry is indicated.

Following either stage 5212 or 5214, execution proceeds to stage 5215. At stage 5215, the Gateway checks to see whether the request represents a "stale request," as will be more fully described below with respect to FIG. 57. At stage 5220, the Gateway tests the result of the stale check from stage 5215. If the request is stale, then it is marked as stale in stage 5222. Otherwise, the record is marked as not stale at stage 5224. Following either stage 5222 or stage 5224, control proceeds to stage 5230. At stage 5230, a message representing the SET request is inserted into the database for tracking purposes, and control proceeds to stage 5240.

At stage 5240, the Gateway checks to see if the request had been marked stale at stage 5222. If so, it proceeds to stage 5242, exiting with an error condition. At stage 5245, the Gateway attempts to retrieve from the database a message corresponding to the current SET request, as will be fully disclosed below with respect to FIG. 59. Stage 5260 checks to see whether the message was successfully retrieved from the database. If the message was not found in the database, then this indicates that the SET request represents a new message, and control proceeds to stage 5270. At stage 5270, a new message representing the SET request is added to the database, as is more fully disclosed below with respect to FIG. 60. Because this is a new request, it must be processed from the beginning, including forward translation. Therefore, after the new message is added at stage 5270, control proceeds to stage 5275. At stage 5275, a status flag is set indicating that the next step to be performed for this message is for translation. If the message was found at stage 5260, then this indicates that the request represents a request that is already in progress. Therefore, control proceeds to stage 5280 to update the database with current information representing the request status. The update process is described in further detail below with respect to FIG. 61. Following stage 5280, control proceeds to stage 5282. At stage 5282, the Gateway checks to see the disposition in which the SET request was left as a result of partial processing. This is done, for example, by interrogating fields in the database record that indicate the steps that have already been performed for this request. At stage 5283, based on this status information, the Gateway indicates the next stage of processing to be performed: either forward translation, reverse translation, or communication with the host. After this status has been set, whether for a new request at stage 5275, or for an already-existing request at stage 5283, control proceeds to stage 5290, which exits the AnalyzeSetRequest routine, returning control to stage 5110 in FIG. 51.

The AnalyzeSetRequest routine as depicted in FIGS. 52A and 52B may be implemented using the following C++ code:

TranslateForward

FIG. 53 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the TranslateForward routine, which is called by stage 5135 in FIG. 51, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5310. At stage 5320, the Gateway forward-translates the request to prepare it for transmission to the host. Forward translation includes packaging the fields in the request into a format that is understandable by the legacy system at the financial institution. The exact format of the translated request will vary from institution to institution. However, in general, the format will consist of a fixed length record with predetermined fields, using a standard character set such as ASCII or EBCDIC. At stage 5330, the Gateway checks to see whether the translation was successfully performed. If not, then control proceeds to stage 5340, which returns an error condition. If the translation was successful, then control proceeds to stage 5350. At stage 5350, the Gateway sets a status flag to indicate that the next stage to be performed for this SET request is to proceed to host communication. This will be used in the next iteration of the Gw.sub.-- ClearSetRequestHandler routine as depicted in FIG. 51. After the status is set at stage 5350, the translate forward routine returns control at stage 5360.

The TranslateForward routine as depicted in FIG. 53 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

DoHostCommunication

FIG. 54 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of host communication, which is called by stage 5145 in FIG. 51 in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5400. At stage 5405, the Gateway obtains from the request object the string representing the request text. At stage 5410, it obtains the sequence number for the request. At stage 5415, the Gateway determines the current time, in order to record the time at which the request is made. At stage 5420, the Gateway sends the request to the host and waits for a response from the host. When a response is received, execution continues at stage 5425. At stage 5425, the Gateway again checks the current time, thereby determining the time at which a response was received. At stage 5430, the Gateway checks to see whether the communication was successfully performed. If a communication was not successful, then the Gateway records that an error occurred at stage 5432. If the communication was successful, then at stage 5435, the Gateway indicates that the request was successfully sent and responded to. At stage 5437, the Gateway sets the response string based upon the response received at stage 5420. At stage 5439, the Gateway sets a status to indicate that reverse translation of the received response is required. Regardless of whether the communication was successful or unsuccessful, execution continues to stage 5450. At stage 5450, the database is updated with status information from the host communication. At stage 5490, control is returned to the calling routine.

The DoHostCommunication routine as depicted in FIG. 54 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

TranslateReverse

FIG. 55 is a flow diagram that depicts the operation of the TranslateReverse routine, as executed in stage 5155 in FIG. 51, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5500. At stage 5510, the Gateway reverse-translates the response received from the legacy system host. Reverse translation includes extracting data from the data records received from the legacy system and placing them in objects so that they are useable by the Gateway. At stage 5520, the Gateway checks to verify that translation was successful. If translation was successful, then control proceeds to stage 5530, at which a status flag is set indicating a successful translation. If translation was not successful, then control proceeds to stage 5540, at which the Status Flag is set to indicate an unsuccessful translation. Regardless of whether translation was successful or unsuccessful, execution proceeds to stage 5550. At stage 5550, a status flag is set to indicate that the next stage for the request is to provide a response from the Gateway. This stage is always executed, because, regardless of whether the translation or any other aspect of the transaction was successful, a response indicating either success or failure is returned by the Gateway. Control then proceeds to stage 5590, in which the TranslateReverse routine returns control to the calling routine in FIG. 51. It will be seen that the TranslateForward routine depicted in FIG. 53, the DoHostCommunication routine depicted in FIG. 54, and the TranslateReverse routine depicted in FIG. 55, each alter the status of the request. As a result, as the loop depicted in FIG. 51 executes a particular request will proceed through all three stages and finally to exit at stage 5190.

The TranslateReverse routine as depicted in FIG. 55 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

GetSetKeyFields

FIGS. 56A and 56B are flow diagrams that depict the execution of the GetSetKeyFields routine, which is called at stage 5205 as illustrated in FIG. 52A, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5600. At stage 5610, the Gateway interrogates the request object to determine the request type. At stage 5620, the Gateway determines whether the request type is for authorization only. If the request type is not for authorization only, then execution proceeds to stage 5625. At stage 5625, the Gateway checks to see whether the request type is for a sale. If the request type is neither for authorization only nor for a sale, then execution proceeds to stage 5630. In stage 5630, the Gateway indicates that the request type is not a supported request, and proceeds to stage 5635, at which point it returns to the caller.

If the request type is either for authorization only or for a sale, then execution proceeds to stage 5640. At stage 5640, the Gateway initializes a container object to represent the request. At stage 5650, the Gateway extracts the transaction identifier (XID) for the transaction. At stage 5652, the Gateway extracts the merchant identifier (MID) for the transaction. At stage 5654, the Gateway extracts the retry request process identifier (RRPID) and the terminal identifier (TID) for the request. At stage 5656, the Gateway extracts the retry count associated with the current request. At stage 5660, a message data area is initialized with the extracted contents. The message area can then be used for further processing by the called routine. At stage 5690, the GetSetKeyFields routine returns control to the caller.

The GetSetKeyFields as depicted in FIGS. 56A and 56B may be implemented using the following C++ code:

Gwdb.sub.-- IsSetMsgStale

FIG. 57 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the Gwdb.sub.-- IsSetMsgStale routine, which is called by stage 5215 as illustrated in FIG. 52A, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5700. At stage 5710, the Gateway determines whether this is the first time the Gwdb.sub.-- IsSetMsgStale routine has been called for this request. If this is the first time, then stages 5715 through 5730 are performed; otherwise, those stages are not performed. At stage 5715, a field representing the message life is initialized to a predetermined duration. The message life is a field that will be used to determine how long the message representing the transaction will remain valid. The use of the message life field prevents a transaction that is effectively lost due to extensive processing delays from being processed. At stage 5720, the Gateway checks to see if the value of the message life is equal to zero. If the message life is equal to zero, then a default value (e.g., 300 seconds or 5 minutes), is assigned to the message life at stage 5725. At stage 5730, an indicator for this request is set to indicate that first time processing has already been performed for this request. This flag is the same flag interrogated at stage 5710 and is used to prevent successive reinitialization of the message life field.

At stage 5740, the Gateway determines whether the merchant's time stamp plus the value of the message life is less than the time of the request. If so, then the request is considered stale and is marked stale at stage 5750. If not, then the request is not considered stale and is marked not stale at stage 5755. Following either of stage 5750 or 5755, the Gwdb.sub.-- IsSetMsgStale exits at stage 5790.

The Gwdb.sub.-- IsSetMsgStale routine as depicted in FIG. 57 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

Gwdb.sub.-- InsertSetMsg

FIG. 58 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the Gwdb.sub.-- InsertSetMsg routine, which is called at stage 5230 as illustrated in FIG. 52A, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5800. At stage 5810, the routine invokes a database insert function by, for example, executing an SQL INSERT command. At stage 5820, the database return code is obtained in order to be used as a return code from the Gwbd.sub.-- InsertSetMsg routine. At stage 5830, a database commit function is performed, thereby instructing the database engine to commit the database changes to a permanent recording (e.g., by writing the information to the file or by journalizing the change made by the INSERT function or both). At stage 5890, the routine returns control to the calling program.

The Gwdb.sub.-- InsertSetMsg as depicted in FIG. 58 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

Gwbd.sub.-- GetHostMsg

FIG. 59 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the Gwbd.sub.-- GetHostMsg routine, which is called at stage 5245 as shown in FIG. 52B, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 5900. At stage 5910, the routine invokes a database select function by, for example, executing an SQL SELECT command. At stage 5920, the database return code is obtained in order to be used as a return code from the Gwbd.sub.-- InsertSetMsg routine. At stage 5930, the Gateway checks to see whether the database retrieve operation was successfully performed. If so, execution proceeds to stage 5935. At stage 5935, the Gateway sets a number of status variables from the values retrieved from the database records, which include the time the request was made, the time a response was received, the contents of the request string, the contents of the response string, and a sequence number for this request. At stage 5940, a commit operation is performed. At stage 5900, control returns to the calling program.

The Gwdb.sub.-- GetHostMsg as depicted in FIG. 59 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

Gwdb.sub.-- InsertHostMsg

FIG. 60 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the Gwdb.sub.-- InsertHostMsg routine, which is called at stage 5270 as illustrated in FIG. 52B, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 6000. At stage 6010, the routine invokes a database insert function by, for example, executing an SQL INSERT command. At stage 6020, the database return code is obtained in order to be used as a return code from the Gwbd.sub.-- InsertSetMsg routine. At stage 6040, a commit operation is performed. At stage 6090, the routine returns control to the calling program.

The Gwdb.sub.-- InsertHostMsg as depicted in FIG. 60 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

Gwdb.sub.-- UpdateSetMsgResponseInfo

FIG. 61 is a flow diagram that depicts the execution of the Gwdb.sub.-- UpdateSetMsgResponseInfo routine, in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Execution begins at stage 6100. At stage 6110, the routine invokes a database update function by, for example, executing an SQL UPDATE command. At stage 6120, the database return code is obtained in order to be used as a return code from the Gwbd.sub.-- UpdateSetMsgResponseInfo routine. At stage 6130, a commit operation is performed. At stage 6190, the routine returns control to the calling program.

The Gwdb.sub.-- UpdateSetMsgResponseInfo as depicted in FIG. 61 may be implemented using the following C++ code:

FIG. 62 is the main administration display for the Gateway in accordance with a preferred embodiment. A set of menu selections are presented at 6200, which will be described in more detail for each display.

FIG. 63 is a configuration panel in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The configuration panel provides access to management information for configuring a gateway management information database. A Merchant Identifier (Mid) 6310 is a thirty character, alphanumeric field that uniquely defines a merchant. A Merchant Name 6320 is a fifty character, alphanumeric field; Edit field 6330 and Delete field 6340 are hyperlinks to detailed panels for modifying information in the management information database.

FIG. 64 is a host communication display for facilitating communication between the Gateway and the acquirer payment host in accordance with a preferred embodiment. An IP Address Field 6410 includes the Internet Protocol address for communicating via TCP/IP to the Internet. A TCP logical port field 6420 uniquely identifies the port for accessing the Internet, and a SAVE field 6430 invokes storing of the host communication information in the database.

FIG. 65 is a Services display in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The service display initiates portions of the Gateway such as host multiplexer 2130 of FIG. 21.

FIG. 66 is a graphical representation of the gateway transaction database in accordance with a preferred embodiment. Each of the fields represents a portion of the internet database schema.

Although particular embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that changes and modifications can be made without departing from the present invention in its broader aspects and, therefore, the appended claims are to encompass within their scope all such changes and modifications that fall within the true scope of the present invention.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A method for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, comprising: receiving a first message from a gateway at a server via a first channel, the first channel operating under a first protocol that allows for gateway-initiated messaging; and transmitting a second message from the server to the gateway via a second channel, the second channel operating under a server-initiated messaging protocol.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the second message comprises a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message or an extended SET message.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the first message comprises a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME)-encapsulated PKCS-7 conformant message comprising name-value pairs.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the gateway comprises an acquirer gateway, and the server comprises a merchant server, the merchant server comprising a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) module for SET request/response message pairs.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the first message comprises a request to upload information.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, wherein the requested upload information comprises management information base (MIB) data, the MIB data being transmitted from the server to the gateway via the second channel.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the first message comprises a request to download information, the requested download information comprising parameters that characterize the virtual point of sale processing being executed on the server.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising: transmitting a third message from the server to a test gateway via the second channel, the server comprising a merchant server, and the third message comprising an extended Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message, wherein the virtual point of sale processing is being tested on the merchant server.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the first message comprises administrative information for the server, the server displaying the administrative information.

10. An apparatus for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, comprising: a gateway, the gateway transmitting a first message via a first channel, the first channel operating under a first protocol that allows for gateway-initiated messaging; and a server, the server receiving the first message via the first channel, and the server transmitting a second message to the gateway via a second channel, the second channel operating under a server-initiated messaging protocol.

11. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the second message comprises a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message or an extended SET message.

12. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the first message comprises a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)-encapsulated PKCS-7 conformant message comprising name-value pairs.

13. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the gateway comprises an acquirer gateway, and the server comprises a merchant server, the merchant server comprising a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) module for SET request/response message pairs.

14. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the first message comprises a request to upload information.

15. The apparatus as recited in claim 14, wherein the requested upload information comprises management information base (MIB) data, the MIB data being transmitted from the server to the gateway via the second channel.

16. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the first message comprises a request to download information, the requested download information comprising parameters that characterize the virtual point of sale processing being executed on the server.

17. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, further comprising: a test gateway, the test gateway receiving a third message from the server via the second channel, the server comprising a merchant server, and the third message comprising an extended Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message, wherein the virtual point of sale processing is being tested on the merchant server.

18. The apparatus as recited in claim 10, wherein the first message comprises administrative information, the server comprising a display, and the server outputting the administrative information on the display.

19. A computer program embodied on a computer-readable medium for virtual point of sale processing using gateway-initiated messages, comprising: a code segment that receives a first message from a gateway via a first channel, the first channel operating under a first protocol that allows for gateway-initiated messaging; and a code segment that transmits a second message to the gateway via a second channel, the second channel operating under a server-initiated messaging protocol.

20. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the second message comprises a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message or an extended SET message.

21. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the first message comprises a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME)-encapsulated PKCS-7 conformant message comprising name-value pairs.

22. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the gateway comprises an acquirer gateway, and the server comprises a merchant server, wherein the code segment that transmits the second message comprises a Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) module stored in the merchant server.

23. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the first message comprises a request to upload information.

24. The computer program as recited in claim 23, wherein the requested upload information comprises management information base (MIB) data, the MIB data being transmitted from the server to the gateway via the second channel.

25. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the first message comprises a request to download information, the requested download information comprising parameters that characterize the virtual point of sale processing being executed on the server.

26. The computer program as recited in claim 19, further comprising: a code segment that transmits a third message from the server to a test gateway via the second channel, the server comprising a merchant server, and the third message comprising an extended Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) message, wherein the virtual point of sale processing is being tested on the merchant server.

27. The computer program as recited in claim 19, wherein the first message comprises administrative information for the server, the server displaying the administrative information.

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Abstract

Patent Drawings (57 sheets)