Trading among untrusted partners via voucher trading system

Abstract

To provide highly usable electronic commerce systems at lower cost, it is important to utilize and co-ordinate the function-specific application service providers (ASPs) that are distributed throughout the Internet such as those providing matching, payment, and delivery services. In order to coordinate independent services that have not yet established trust among each other, this paper proposes to use electronic "vouchers" to link untrusted trading partners. A voucher is a digital representation of rights to claim goods or services and can be securely transferred between trading partners using the Voucher Trading System (VTS). This paper clarifies the basic functionalities that VTS should provide for coordinating untrusted trading partners. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.