A short explanation of ECE Senior Design Team Phoney Money's iPhone credit card system.

Team Members: Kevin Allgaier, Brianna Carges, Amy Costandi, Barry Lai, Jeffrey Li

Phoney Money is a software and web service package that replaces a customers credit card with his or her iPhone for in-store transactions. This system allows iPhone owners to use their iPhones to make secure in-store credit card payments and allows stores to accept those payments. Targeted issues and major requirements in this project include enterprise scalability, security, and robustness. With a diverse set of needs, Phoney Money leverages several technologies, including: Objective-C, Java, JSP, MySQL, Transport Layer Security (formerly SSL), and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for communication between clients. In a typical transaction using this system, a customer approaches a store running customized point-of-sale software. Phoney Moneys web service middleware then allows customer and cashier to identify each other and to send relevant credit card and price information over the internet. The customers credit card is then charged via the merchants existing payment processing service. This model requires no additional hardware and therefore requires minimal change for the merchant.

Phoney Money expands the marketplace by providing customers and merchants with another means of exchanging goods and services. That is, it enables a whole new class of transactions would-be customers who have forgotten their wallets but have their phones can do business with merchants through our system. This platform also introduces mobile Web capabilities to the point-of-sale checkout process, laying a foundation for opportunities to streamline and enhance the commercial checkout process. In a market where the cellular phone has already combined the functionality of several other devices, merging the wallet is a logical step.

The system includes iPhone software for customers, register software for merchants, a back-end server that connects the customer to the merchant, and user documentation.
For more information check out the step-by-step demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdey4YczFas) and the in-depth presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P13-lVBgeVA) given on ECE Day '09. (less info)