SECURE AUTHENTICATION AND PAYMENT SYSTEM

摘要

The present invention provides a service for allowing secure financial transactions to be carried out, the service involving authenticating a user's identity and/or status as part of a financial transaction with another party and in the event that the user is authenticated arranging for the transaction to be completed without revealing the user's financial details and/or other personal details to that other party. Authentication data and transaction data may be communicated over any suitable communications channel(s). The invention provides a trusted authentication and payment environment that protects a user's financial details, but allows them to be securely authenticated and arranges for transactions to be fulfilled, whilst providing other parties with reassurance that transactions will be completed. In this way, fraud and theft due to misappropriation of financial details can be minimized.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for facilitating electronic transactions between a first party and one or more second parties, comprising:
establishing a first relationship with the first party, the first relationship defining a dynamically controllable and selectable selection of at least one user-specified and user-specific authentication method selected from a plurality of stored authentication methods of different types operating on an authentication device over a plurality of different communication channels and useable to authenticate the identity of the first party in a non-predictable and anonymous manner; establishing a second relationship with at least one of said one or more second parties; storing one or more associations between payment methods and transactions, the one or more associations specified by the first party; and upon receiving an authentication request related to a transaction with one or more of the second parties: controlling the authentication device to validate the identity of the first party by presenting the first party with at least one of the previously selected user-specified and user-specific stored authentication methods on the authentication device; and upon successful authentication using the at least one of the previously selected user-specified and user-specific stored authentication methods on the authentication device, initiating the transaction with said one or more second parties using one or more payment methods associated with the transaction.