Chapter 11: The Payment Framework

Abstract

The core of SEMPER consists of several blocks. Each block is a generic and extensible framework for a particular service. This chapter describes the design of the Payment Block: the SEMPER generic payment service framework (GPSF).

There are a variety of different and incompatible payment systems. For business application developers this implies the need to understand the details of different systems, to adapt the code as soon as new payment systems are introduced, and also to provide a way of picking a suitable payment instrument for every transaction. GPSF is a common framework within which different payment systems can be used in a unified manner. The primary component of GPSF is a set of generic payment service application program interfaces (APIs). GPSF also provides services for transparent negotiation and selection of payment instruments. This allows applications to be developed independent of specific payment systems. GPSF was designed and prototyped during the early stages of SEMPER. We compare our design with more recent related designs and briefly discuss some issues which require further research.