A generic electronic payment model supporting multiple merchant transactions

This paper presents a generic electronic payment model which is intended fo r a multi-merchant transaction, in which more than one merchant (the retail er, multiple resellers and content providers) are involved in the distribut ion of electronic contents. With our payment model, every involved merchant will be notified to verify the license information of a content on the set tlement day before the customer actually pays for his purchase. Thus, pirac y can be discouraged, intellectual property rights of electronic contents c an be protected. Each of the involved merchants can obtain his own deserved share of the customer's payment in accordance with their union agreement o n this content. As examples to demonstrate the applications of our generic payment model, two well-known payment systems are enhanced herein, based on our payment model.