| In our time, most financial transactions are processed via some form of electronic system, an ATM, online and offline credit card purchases, or money wiring. While these transactions provide a quick and an efficient transfer of various funds, security of the system is still the main issue. Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile phones can provide fast yet secure electronic financial transactions. One of the many uses of NFC enabled phones will be a quick and secure checkout process at a Point-of-Sale (POS). A phone, via its NFC interface, establishes a quick connection with a reader at a POS and sends banking information; a user's authentication is done via mobile network and thus prevents credit card fraud.;In this thesis, I propose a Secure Near Field Communication Mobile Payments (SNFCMP) system implementing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for security. Compared to other public key cryptography algorithms, ECC uses much smaller key sizes, requires less computation power, and thus is more suitable for limited resource devices such as mobile phones. The SNFCMP system is based on existing 3G cellular network authentication schemes and NFC Forum technical specifications. |
