The P4a Payment infrastructure facilitates the service suppliers to sell their services/products while in parallel, provides the capability on end-users/consumers to purchase both machine and human offered resources (services, applications, AT, etc) using a uniform solution. The Payment infrastructure can be used by all platforms, services and components of the Prosperity4All ecosystem provided that they need to support some kind of financial transaction. It relieves service suppliers from the development of a payment system or interaction with third-party systems, as it facilitates the interaction with third party systems, through the usage of P4All functionality. This infrastructure acts as a mediator among the Prosperity4all applications and the well-known and trusted electronic payment system, Paypal. Payment infrastructure includes three subsystems: a) the charging and payment subsystem, which facilitates service suppliers and provides trust to the service consumers b) the micropayment subsystem, which is dedicated to payments of micro amounts, and c) the user funding subsystem.
The charging and payment subsystem is responsible for the following workflow: (a) usage of services on behalf of the consumer and subsequent charging and notification (b) billing depending on the preferences of the user (c) payment on behalf of the user and notifications This is completed with the retrieval of statistics on behalf of the consumer, the supplier and the administrator as well as the administration of his/her profile on behalf of the user.
In terms of functionality the charging and payment subsystem provides the following:
- Charging of the services used
- Billing
- Payment
- Notifications and reports
- Administration