2. Definition
Registered trademark of CyberCash Corp. which offers
secure means through which credit card information can be
exchanged over internet. Cyber cash permits online payments
without the fear of cyber fraud, expensive credit card approval
equipment, and dedicational telephone lines.
3. Cyber cash has been described as Federal Express
of Internet payment business, since it offers safe, efficient and
inexpensive delivery of payments across Internet. Cyber cash
makes available the software and services needed to exchange
payments securely across the Internet with its Secure Internet
Payment Service. Using a procedure that incorporates
encryption and digital signatures, cyber cash gives consumers
a “digital wallet”, and merchants a conduit to Internet payment
processing through their own banks. Customers are able to
authorize payments out of their digital wallets. The payments
are signed and encrypted, then sent through the merchant bank
to cyber cash, which in turn passes the transaction to the
merchant’s bank for processing. The digital wallet initially
supported only credit cards, but now supports digital cash
transfers for small dollar amounts for products and services
that are too expensive to justify using a credit card.
4. The Credit Card Service lets any consumer with a valid
credit card buy from any Cyber Cash enabled merchant.
Designed to integrate fully with existing transaction processing
systems used by banks and other financial institutions, the
service provides automated and instantaneous
authentication, enabling order processing to traverse the
Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
5. Cyber Cash's Secure Internet
Payment Service
CyberCash, Inc. was founded in August 1994. The
company is focused on providing Secure Financial
Transactions Services over the Internet, including secure credit
card transactions, electronic checks and micro transactions.
6. Features of Cybercash
• Secure Internet credit card (macro-level) transactions since
April 1995.
• Thousands of transactions processed daily.
• Over 500,000 CyberCash Customer-Wallets in the distribution
channel, including CyberCash, Checkfree, and Compuserve
wallets.
• Connected to 80% of the banks in the U.S
CyberCoin-- The CyberCoin service enables small cash
payments for instantaneous electronic delivery of information,
products and services.
7. Advantages:
• CyberCash uses strong encryption for transporting payment
information.
– They claim to be the only Internet payment company
granted an export license to use RSA's 786 bit encryption
algorithm.
• The Merchant does not see the buyer's credit card number.
• Merchants do not have a waiting period for receiving
payment, as with First Virtual. The merchant's bank account is
credited within in the normal time frame for credit card
transactions.
Disadvantages:
• Potential buyers and merchants must both install extra
software in order to use the system. This makes the system
harder to use for people with little computer experience.
• Merchants need to have an account with an acquiring bank that
accepts CyberCash Secure Internet Payments.
8. Players
• Merchant: The first player is the merchant, the organization that
wants to sell products online.
• Acquiring Financial Institution: This is the bank where the
Merchant has set up a merchant account and hopes lots of money
will eventually be deposited.
• CyberCash: This organization functions as a gateway. CyberCash
facilitates credit card transactions by interacting with other
organizations to handle credit card authorizations and captures.
• Cardholder Financial Institution: This organization issues the
credit card to the consumer and maintains the account from
which funds will be deducted if the transaction succeeds.
• Third-Party Processor: Banks that often outsource various
merchant services to a separate company. This organization may
handle services such as settlement, billing, authorization, and
reporting. There may or may not be a third-party processor
involved in the transaction process.
9. The CyberCash Credit Card
Purchasing/Payment System
The CyberCash credit card payment system consists of
three parts :
• The CyberCash Wallet-software distributed free to consumers
(Windows or Mac-based)
• The Secure Merchant Payment System (SMPS) for the seller's
web-server; It communicates with the customer and the
Wallet-software.
• CyberCash Gateway Servers for banks; It links the seller's
server to existing financial networks of the bank in a safe
manner for the bank and acts as a firewall.
11. 1. The Customer has decided what it is he/she wishes to
purchase, where he/she wants it shipped, etc.... The seller's
server returns a summary of the item, price, transaction
ID, etc. to consumer.
2. If everything is OK, the customer clicks on the "Pay" Button
which launches the CyberCash, Checkfree or Compuserve
Wallet. The customer chooses the credit card from their
"wallet" with which he/she wishes to pay with and clicks OK
to forward the order and encrypted payment information to the
seller.
12. 3. The seller's server receives the packet, strips off
the order and forwards the still encrypted payment information
digitally signed with the seller's private key to the bank's
CyberCash gateway-server. The merchant cannot see the
consumer's credit card information, since it is encrypted with a
key that only the bank's CyberCash gateway can decrypt.
4. CyberCash gateway-server receives the
packet, takes the transaction behind its firewall and off the
Internet, unwraps the data, reformats the transaction (the
payer's identity, amount to pay and the seller's identity) and
forwards it to the seller's bank over dedicated financial
networks.
13. 5. The seller's bank then forwards the authorization request to the
issuing (customer's) bank via the card associations or directly
to American Express or Discover in those cases (this is
applicable only to the USA). The approval or denial code then
is sent back to CyberCash gateway-server.
6. CyberCash gateway-server then returns the approval or denial
code to the seller who then passes it on to the customer.
To complete the transaction, the seller's server sends the
customer a digital receipt. A transaction can be captured and
posted to the seller's account while the customer is still on-
line, or later if you cannot ship the purchased product
immediately.
14. Consumers Benefits:
• Safe, private and easy to use. Protected by the highest
allowed levels of Internet encryption with assured
authentication.
• Use existing Visa, MasterCard, American Express or
Discover. No special credit cards are necessary.
• Complete on-line payments
Merchant Benefits:
• Real-time authorization and settlement
• Receive payments instantly and secure
• No need to maintain expensive phone or fax operations
• Open 24 hours a day
