Pay with a (Group) Selfie (PGS)

Ernesto Damiani of Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates will develop a software toolkit to enable the secure purchase of goods by taking a photo with a simple mobile phone. The procedure only requires both purchaser and merchant to carry a simple phone and to visually identify themselves and details of the purchase, for example with a card, that can be captured in a single photograph. They will build software that uses visual cryptography to divide the photograph into two parts or shares, one sent to each phone. When a network connection is encountered, the shares are transmitted to a third party who runs a point-of-service and reconstructs the image thereby validating the transaction before transferring payment. This method enables transactions between individuals in low network connectivity areas and by illiterate parties.