Combining Biometric ID Cards and Online Credit Card Transactions

Internet shopping, a strong alternative to traditional "go, see, touch and buy" shopping, has been one of the mostly used facilities of the Internet. Several online shopping systems serve internet users all around the world and enable people to get the products they need with a small effort. Internet shopping can be considered as "see and buy" retailing. While the "see" part is implemented by the expertise and imagination of web designers, different payment schemes have been devised for the "buy" part. The most used media are online credit card transaction systems. Several different methodologies have been developed for credit card transactions. However, research has shown that most of internet users do not fully trust credit card payment systems because of financial risks such as loss of money. Various approaches have been performed in order to gain the consumers' trust in credit card transactions; but no foolproof solution has been found to overcome the weaknesses in those systems. This paper proposes a new solution that combines biometric ID card with online credit card transactions. Since the implementation details such as the type and the matching algorithm of the biometrics data might vary between countries because of the project requirements and laws, the proposed system remains local for the each country that might adopt the solution. To elucidate the proposed system and provide a concrete example, we used Turkish e-ID pilot system as the identity verification module since it best fits the requirements of the framework.